Montana's Ham Radio Forum

The FCC went paperless back in February 2015. This means no routine mailing of FCC license documents. Your authority to operate is now based upon your license being listed in the FCC data base called the Universal Licensing System (ULS). You can request that a paper copy be mailed to you, but to save money the FCC no longer uses distinctive paper stock to print hard copy licenses. Requested paper copies will be printed on standard white recycled paper. So at this point you might as well download an official copy of your license and print it out yourself. That way you will always have a copy saved to your computer and can print out a paper copy whenever you want to.

I have attached a couple of documents concerning how to obtain a paper copy of your FCC license. The ARRL document does not go into detail on how to actually navigate the FCC web site, so I have attached a second document with more detailed instructions.

The problem with getting the copy from the FCC's site is it has the words "Official Copy" diagonally across the entire 5x7 document, in a very visible watermark. Interestingly, the wallet-size copy does not have that watermark anywhere, just the opposite of what it should be.

And unfortunately, the only way to obtain an "Official Copy" is to actually log-in to the FCC web site. If you just visit the FCC web site and do a license call sign search without logging-in, you will only get a "Reference Copy". It will have the words "Reference Copy" diagonally across the entire 5x7 document, just as the "Official Copy" does. But because "Reference Copy" is a longer word combination, it extends all the way across and onto the wallet-size copy as well. So no matter what you do, there is no way to get a "clean" copy of the main license suitable for framing. It will have either "Official Copy" or "Reference Copy" diagonally across the document. At least with the "Official Copy" you can print out the wallet-size copy and laminate it without the goofy FCC watermark appearing across it. A strange situation, but the FCC only cares about what appears in the ULS data base. Paper documents may be desired by the license holder, but only what is listed in the FCC data base counts legally.

Side Note. The FCC is not just picking on the Amateur Radio Service; they do this for all the various radio services. I recently reviewed a business band license submitted to my office by a contractor requesting authorization to use his 2-way radios on base. The license document contained the same "Official Copy" watermark diagonally across the entire document. The only difference was that business band licenses do not have a separate wallet-size copy. They only get the main license document.