QRA-Locator – Map of Europe 1965 – IARU R1
The QRA-Locator consisted of a five-character code with two capital letters, a two-digit number and a lower-case letter, for example AB55m. Without repetitions the system covered the area 0-52 degrees Eastern longitude and 40-66 degrees Northern latitude. The system used two letters to indicate the largest unit, “Square”, that was 2 degrees longitude * 1 degree latitude. To facilitate the measurement of this distance, D元NQ introduced at the DL VHF meeting in Weinheim on 1958, a method named QRA-Kennen based on a five-digits code. This system has been in use by European hams for some decades, The QRA Locator The current Grid Square Locator System, as we know it today, is the evolution of a previous method, invented in the late 1950s with the goal to help in calculating scores for VHF contests. Here we will try to recap the history and the origin of all these names. QTH Locator, QRA Locator, Maidenhead Locator and WW Grid Locator system are all different terms, often used to identify the same system, that should sound familiar to you. Not all radio amateurs, and especially the youngest ones, however, do not know the history of the birth of this clever, although crude, method of calculating position on earth. The grid locator system is one of the many peculiarities that characterize the amateur radio world, and of which all radio amateurs are or should be aware.
They measure 2.5 minutes latitude by 5 minutes longitude, roughly corresponding to 3 × 4 miles in the continental US.The Grid Square Locator, also known as the Maidenhead Locator System, is a geographical co-ordinate method based on a 6-digit code, widely used by amateur radio operators to determine a rough position on the Earth. These more precise locators are used as part of the exchange in the 10-GHz contest. A grid square is indicated by two letters (the field) and two numbers (the square), as in FN31, the grid square within which W1AW, ARRL's Maxim Memorial Station, resides.Įach subsquare is designated by the addition of two letters after the grid square, as FN44ig. Grid squares are a shorthand means of describing your general location anywhere on the Earth in a manner that is easy to communicate over the air.Īn instrument of the Maidenhead Locator System (named after the town outside London where it was first conceived by a meeting of European VHF managers in 1980), a grid square measures 1° latitude by 2° longitude and measures approximately 70 × 100 miles in the continental US.
One of the first things you will notice when you tune the low end of any VHF band is that most QSOs include an exchange of "grid squares." What are grid squares? Well, they're more like rectangles and are just a way of dividing up the surface of the Earth.
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