Handbook, chapter 14. Locator, log and confirmation
A callsign says which country you are in. That is not enough: Ukraine is eight hundred kilometres from west to east, and on 144 MHz the difference between Uzhhorod and Kharkiv is the difference between a contact and no contact.
That is why a grid locator is given alongside the callsign β six characters that hold your position to within a few kilometres and still take two seconds to say.
Six characters, three divisionsβ
KO50gk β centre of the cell 50,438Β° N 30,542Β° E To PM95 β 8Β 176 km, bearing 54Β° (NE).
Each pair of characters divides the previous cell. Two letters cut the planet into 324 fields, two digits split a field into a hundred squares, and two more letters split a square into 576 subsquares. The red cell is yours; the grey one in the first frame belongs to the station you are working.
Type in any locator and watch the cell travel across the grid. That is the whole system.
Why it was built this wayβ
The system was proposed by John Morris G4ANB and adopted at an IARU meeting in the English town of Maidenhead in 1980 β hence the name.
The problem was a narrow one: say your coordinates by voice, through noise, quickly and without errors. "Fifty degrees twenty-seven minutes north, thirty degrees thirty-one minutes east" takes twenty seconds and offers three chances to mishear. "Kilo Oscar five zero" takes two.
That is why letters and digits alternate: neighbouring characters are of different kinds, so you cannot confuse one position for another. And that is why fields run AβR rather than AβZ: eighteen divisions give exactly 20Β° of longitude, a whole number.
How many characters to give. On HF, usually four β a square roughly 140 Γ 110 km, which is enough for any band and any award. Six are used on VHF and on satellite contacts, where kilometres decide which way to turn the antenna.
The locator grid is rectangular; the Earth is a sphere. In the "field" frame the line between two cells is drawn straight simply so that both are visible; the real path of the radio wave follows a great-circle arc and would look curved on a rectangular grid.
The distance and bearing under the diagram are computed on the sphere, not from the picture: haversine for distance, initial great-circle bearing for direction. Over paths of a few thousand kilometres the difference from the "straight line" runs to hundreds of kilometres and tens of degrees.
Bearing: which way to turn the antennaβ
The second number under the diagram is the initial bearing. For a dipole it means nothing; for a directional antenna it is literally where to point it.
And here hides the commonest mistake of a beginner with a rotator: the great-circle bearing is not the direction on a map. The shortest path from Kyiv to Japan does not run across Asia but over the north β almost due north-east, almost across the pole. On a school map that looks absurd; on a globe it is obvious.
The error grows with distance. Over a thousand kilometres you can ignore it; over eight thousand you cannot β point the antenna "by the map" and you will be radiating past your target.
What to record about every contactβ
The minimum, without which the entry is useless:
| Field | Example | Why it is required |
|---|---|---|
| Date and time UTC | 2026-09-06 18:42 | without the time the contact will not match the other station's log |
| Frequency or band | 14.074 MHz Β· 20 m | awards are counted per band |
| Mode | SSB, CW, FT8 | likewise |
| Callsign | UT0UI | the contact itself |
| Report sent and received | 59 / 59 | two separate fields, and they get mixed up constantly |
The rest is optional, but strongly recommended: name, QTH, locator, the other station's antenna, a comment. A year later that will be the only thing left of an evening on the air.
This is not a formality. The station in Japan logs the contact in its local time, you log it in yours, and when the two are matched they agree on neither the date nor the hour. So the air settled on one common time, and in the log it is always UTC, even if your software can display local time.
The log: paper, yours, or someone else'sβ
Paper has one advantage: it depends on nothing. And one drawback: in a paper log you cannot find out whether you have already worked this station on this band β and that is exactly the question that comes up every day.
Software on a computer answers that question and a dozen others: it reads the frequency from the transceiver, stamps the time, and tells you whether the callsign is new. It is also what you export contacts from.
The export format is the same everywhere β ADIF. It is a text file in which every field carries its own tag and every contact ends with an end-of-record marker. It looks unusual, it is readable by eye, and it is how logs move between programs and services.
There is one rule that matters here: your log is the one on your own disk. Services come and go; the ADIF file you hold will outlive any of them.
Confirmation: what it is for and what kinds existβ
A contact has happened when both sides have logged it and the two entries match. Until there is a confirmation, the contact does not exist as far as awards are concerned.
- LoTW β the ARRL system, verified by digital signature. The strictest and therefore the most valuable: an entry cannot be faked, and it is what serious awards accept. Setting up the certificate is an hour of fuss, once in your life.
- eQSL β simpler and faster, no signature, and not every award accepts it.
- Logs on callsign-directory sites β one-click matching, convenient day to day.
- A paper QSL card β the slowest and most expensive, and for that very reason the most rewarding. Via the bureau it takes months, sometimes years; direct by post is faster and dearer.
Paper cards have not disappeared and will not. You can earn an award without them β but a box of cards from islands that are activated once a decade is not something you would trade for anything.
A rule learned in practice: fill an empty locator in the log from a directory, but never overwrite one that is already there. A locator given on the air is where the station actually was: a summer house, a car, a DXpedition. A locator from a profile is where it usually sits. For awards and records that difference can decide everything.
Where all this leadsβ
A log is not bookkeeping, it is data. Once a few thousand contacts have accumulated, they show things you cannot see from the air: when a band really opens, how far your antenna actually reaches, how much more distance the digital modes cover than voice.
An analysis of exactly such a log β with a map, histograms and hunches put to the test β is on this site: almost seventeen thousand contacts examined. That is what a carefully kept log turns into after a few years.
Next β chapter 15, digital modes and FT8: why two thirds of the air is taken up by a mode in which you hear nothing.