It looks like this in a more geodetic (less flat) view: If you look carefully at field IO above (encompassing most of the UK and Ireland), you can see this refined grid. The first letter represents longitude and the second latitude as shown below.Įach field is sub-divided into 10×10=100 squares starting again in the southwest counting north in columns of tens and shifting east for the next ten.
More detail here.īasically, our planet is divided into 18×18=324 fields identified by two letters (AA-RR)Įach field is 20° longitude (east-west) and and 10° latitude (north-south).
The planet is divided up into 32,400 grid squares roughly 100mi wide by 70mi high (in continental USA) per the Maidenhead Locator System. The grid square system was adopted by the IARU for specifying amateur radio station location in a relatively small area. Many hams need to know your exact location for logging and awards purposes. They measure 2.5 minutes latitude by 5 minutes longitude, roughly corresponding to 3 × 4 miles in the continental US.If you are active on HF or non-repeater VHF/UHF frequencies, you should know your operational grid square when making contacts.
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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