

The program also gives the distance in miles plus the home and target latitude and longitudes. The distance calculated is 44km which equates t0 2 points for the contact. Here is an example of a calculation from QF22ej to QF12wi.

Amazing how elusive that extra distance can be sometimes during a contest! It is therefore very important to get the distance calculations right to ensure maximum points. You can see that a contact with a station 149km away gives 10 points per QSO, whereas at 150km the points score becomes 20 points per QSO. Following is an example of scoring for contacts on VHF.Į 300 kms and greater, 30 points per QSO. In the John Moyle Field Day contest points are allocated based on distance between the working station and the worked station. This is an excellent application developed by ON6MU. Once you have your station locator and that of a station contacted, Tiny Locator is a very useful tool to confirm the grid square co-ordinates and determine the distance between two grid squares. The location is pinpointed with a red marker with a black dot at the top and middle of the outlined grid.Ī grid locator consisting of a 6 letter/figure combination measures approximately 4.82803 kilometres x 6.43738 kilometres (3 x 4 miles for those that use that “other” measurement system). The result shows the latitude and longitude of the Maidenhead Grid Square calculated to be in QF22mg. In this case I have entered an address of 1018 Plenty Road, Bundoora, Vicoria, 3083. You can enter an address, city, state and postcode, or a callsign (the callsign address information is extracted from QRZ.COM). The first calculates your grid locator based on an address or latitude/longitude. If you want to know what grid square represents your location, I recommend two references on the net. In New Zealand only two grids cover the country, RF and RI. For Australia the first two grid square letters range from OH at the top western extreme of Australia to QE for Tasmania and to the east. The whole world has been divided into grid squares. The actual grid locator for a station’s location is derived from their latitude and longitude on the earth and generally consists of 2 letters, 2 numbers and 2 letters.

Many VHF and above contests, such as the John Moyle Field Day, rely on stations knowing their grid locator so that points can be allocated based on the distance between stations.

The grid locator system comes into its own particularly on VHF and above where stations are keen to record contact (QSO) distances. John Morris, G4ANB, is accredited with developing the Maidenhead (Grid) Locator system in 1980, which has been adopted worldwide by radio amateurs.
