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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

I love the hidden substructure of trivia like this.

The article missed a really juicy one.

"The Federal Communications Committee set aside the 'W' and 'K' codes for radio stations east and west of the Mississippi respectively. 'Q' was designated for international telecommunications. 'Z' was reserved for special uses"

Okay, but why K and W for United States civilian radio stations?

The answer lies in Morse Code:

    A = . -  ->  W = . - -
    N = - .  ->  K = - . -

The US originally requested "A" for "Army" and "N" for "Navy" when applying to the International Telegraph Union (ITU) in 1912.

The civilian stations came out of adding a dash to the end of both of those letters. N became K, A became W.

Then you will also enjoy the naming scheme for runways, e.g. 22L means 220-229 degrees magnetic heading, Left (runways with no parallel will have no trailing letter).

Note that runway 22L is the same as 4R, just with the opposite approach (from the other end, thus 180 degrees around). The 2 names appear at the corresponding ends of the runway.

In airport LFPG, runways 27R and 26R are strictly parallel.

You'll often get consecutively numbered runways that are parallel if there's already a C/L/R on that heading.

For example, DFW has 17L, 17C, 17R, 18L and 18R all with the same magnetic heading (176/356). Everything really is bigger in Texas. :)

And because the magnetic pole moves around over time, that means runways designations aren't constant. A few years ago, the runway at the airport where I fly had to change from 09/27 to 10/28 because of this.

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