Handbook, chapter 3. Operating under martial law
This is the shortest chapter in the book and the only one with no instructions in it at all. The reason is simple: here «I think it's allowed now» costs someone trouble with the law, and sometimes a great deal more.
So what follows is about what does not change: why the restrictions exist, what stays available without any permit at all, and where to find out what applies today.
Where the line runs
On the left is what is not regulated at all. On the right is what goes through a permit and the restrictions in force, and about which this handbook will tell you nothing.
Why transmission is restricted
Not because radio amateurs are in anybody's way. The reason is physical, and it is worth understanding whatever the circumstances.
A transmitter is visible. Any station that goes on the air can be located — with two or three receivers at separated points, in minutes. This is not a hypothesis but ordinary technique that everyone uses, radio amateurs included: among us it is called «fox hunting» and it is a sport.
The content does not matter. What is located is not the conversation but the signal itself. So «I wasn't transmitting anything like that» is not an argument here — what counts is the fact of radiating and where it comes from.
The spectrum is shared. Amateur bands sit next to service bands, and a signal that has drifted off frequency or has a dirty spectrum becomes somebody else's problem. In peacetime that is a question of courtesy; at other times it is not.
This is logic to understand rather than to memorise. The rules follow from it and change with the circumstances — and that is exactly why they must be taken from an official source, not from an article.
What stays available
Practically everything except transmitting. And that is not a consolation prize: most of what people in radio actually do needs no transmitter.
Listening. A receiver radiates nothing and concerns nobody. The bands have not gone anywhere: on forty metres in the evening it is the same Europe as always.
Keeping an SWL log. A listener's callsign is issued without an examination. With it, the stations you hear can be logged formally, confirmed, and used to collect SWL awards.
Learning CW. Half an hour a day for six months and you read it by ear. It is exactly the skill that cannot be caught up quickly when the chance comes.
Building a receiver. A receiver radiates nothing, so the soldering iron is always available — and it is the best way to spend the time when you cannot transmit.
Measuring propagation. Networks of automatic receivers, beacons, data on the state of the ionosphere — all of it is available and has gone nowhere.
Preparing for the examination. Time spent on theory now is a licence class you get straight away rather than a year later.
Two more things worth knowing
Amateur stations can be called on for emergency communications. The Regulations say so explicitly, and it is for cases like these that amateur radio keeps its status in many countries. How that is done is decided by the state, not by an individual operator.
A receiving antenna is still an antenna. A wire strung across a roof looks the same whatever is connected to it. That is not a prohibition, just a reason to think about the neighbours and about how your installation looks from outside.
This chapter deliberately has no list of what is allowed and what is not. Not because the topic is awkward, but because such a list goes out of date faster than it can be read, and the price of a mistake here is considerable.
Where to look:
- NCEC — the regulator that takes the decisions and publishes them;
- UCRF — the body that issues the documents and knows how things stand;
- the Ukrainian Amateur Radio Regulations — the founding document;
- your regional radio society — the fastest way to find out how it actually works right now.
Checked on 6 September 2026. If you are reading this later, assume it is out of date and check for yourself.
Next — chapter 4, the wave: the one equation everything else grows from.