Enter name or keyword(s) to search     Use Simple Search

The QRZ name search engine operates in two modes, the simple mode (default) and the advanced mode. When the checkbox next to Use Simple Mode is checked, then the "simple" rules apply.

When "simple" rules are in affect, the engine will automatically add the necessary search operators (explained below) to your query to perform an AND search. In other words, if you input Joe Smith into the box, the search will return all rows that contain a Joe AND a Smith. This may not return what you think since both the Joe and the Smith could be anywhere in the record, including the name of the town. In other words, using the example above, "Joel Brown in Smithville" would be a valid match.

To avoid the default "simple" behavior, it is necessary to turn off (uncheck) the Use Simple Search feature. With simple search disabled, the more advanced search options (see below) are available.

Let's try another example. Suppose you want a listing of all the hams in South Bend, Indiana. These are indexed with the primary keywords: SOUTH BEND IN. In order to limit the search to just the specific string, the simple mode must be turned OFF and the string enclosed in quotes. Therefore, this search must be performed with the Use Simple Search unchecked and "south bend in" (with the quotes as shown) entered into the search box.

ALL SEARCHES ARE CASE INSENSITIVE - i.e. both upper and lower case letters are equally. You can use upper, lower, or mixed case letters in your query - the results will be the same.

More elaborate searching is possible. See below.

Note: the advanced features are activated only when the Simple Search checkbox is OFF (i.e. not checked). When the Simple Search checkbox is ON (the default), the search engine adds a leading plus (+) and a trailing star (*) to each word in your query.

The boolean full-text search capability that is available when Simple Search is OFF supports the following search operators:

+   A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in every row returned.

-   A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in any row returned.

By default (when neither plus nor minus is specified) the word is optional, but the rows that contain it will be rated higher.

< >   These two operators are used to change a word's contribution to the relevance value that is assigned to a row. The < operator decreases the contribution and the > operator increases it. See the example below.

( )   Parentheses are used to group words into subexpressions.

~   A leading tilde acts as a negation operator, causing the word's contribution to the row relevance to be negative. It's useful for marking noise words. A row that contains such a word will be rated lower than others, but will not be excluded altogether, as it would be with the - operator.

*   An asterisk is the truncation operator. Unlike the other operators, it should be appended to the word, not prepended.

"   The phrase, that is enclosed in double quotes ", matches only rows that contain this phrase literally, as it was typed.

And here are some examples:

apple banana 
    find rows that contain at least one of these words. 

+apple +juice 
    ... both words. 

+apple macintosh 
    ... word ``apple'', but rank it higher if it also contain ``macintosh''. 

+apple -macintosh 
    ... word ``apple'' but not ``macintosh''. 

+apple +(>pie <strudel) 
    ... ``apple'' and ``pie'', or ``apple'' and ``strudel'' (in any order),
    but rank ``apple pie'' higher than ``apple strudel''. 

apple* 
    ... ``apple'', ``apples'', ``applesauce'', and ``applet''. 

"some words"
    ... ``some words of wisdom'', but not ``some noise words''. 

If you're having trouble find a person's name that you know is in the database, you need to remember that persons are generally listed by their full legal name. Your friend Ed, for example, is probably listed as either Edwin or Edward. This is another example where using the star (*) will help as you can enter his name as ED* and the program will find all "Ed's" which fit the match criteria. Be sure and enter a last name since there are thousands of "Ed's" in the database and only the first few will be shown.

Names which use an apostrophe like O'Malley, O'Rielly, etc. are probably listed in the database as 'O MALLEY', 'O RIELLY' with a space instead of an apostrophe. You might also want to try leaving the space out as 'OMALLEY', etc.. We don't know why the FCC lists things this way but that's just the way it is. Please don't ask us to change a listing - ask the FCC. There are also some unusual things that the FCC does with last names beginning with DE and/or MAC. When in doubt, try looking for the name by using a space after the prefix - even if the person doesn't really spell their name that way. Again, that's the way the FCC does it - sometimes.

Enter name or keyword(s) to search     Use Simple Search