Skip Goulet said:
I intended to look up KMA367 but forgot. Next on my list!
KMA367 has been 'the' LAPD FCC callsign since public safety radio began in So Cal. The license is still active, with 1
VHF Low Band frequency, and several
VHF High Band frequencies assigned to it.
A little history/trivia, for those who are not familiar with California cop culture:
It used to be pretty common on the
law-enforcement side to have license plate rings on your
POV with your agencies FCC callsign on it to identify yourself as an 'off-duty'. In fact, most agencies had them made, and either issued or made them available to officers and their immediate family. This was because back in the day, up to even the 90's in some places, agency dispatch centers identified themselves by FCC callsign, so the callsigns were pretty well-known among local lawmen, but not the general public (until Adam-12). LAPD, for example, used "KMA367" from their dispatch center, because way, way back when they were on low-band, that was the license for their low-band dispatch frequencies. By tradition, that FCC is the one that was recognized as LAPD. LASD and many
LA Basin agencies also had KMA numbers, but I don't remember what they were. San Bernardino SO (my old agency) was KMA-795. CHP's is probably most recognized. KA4993 is the statewide license for their (recently replaced)
VHF extender channel. The last time I was at the CHP academy in 2000-2001, they still offered the license plate rings for sale at the Academy store.
While not nearly as popular now as it used to be (since the pukes figured out what it meant), the practice is still out there. To this day, you will see KA4993 rolling down the highway on the back of personal vehicles. Very rarely, you will still see a KMA license plate ring in some flavor, and most often it seems to be on the back of a VERY retired officer's car, and he has kept it on there because back when he retired, it was still common practice, or just for nostalgia. Nowadays, very few of these agencies still have the original KMA licenses due to upgrades in radio systems, and there is almost no one working the street who will still recognize the agencies by the callsigns.