UK

The UK now has 3 classes of licence.

These are:

Foundation, Intermediate, and Full.

None of these require the passing of a Morse exam, due to the effort of Bruce Perens, and his No Code campaign.

The only difference between the classes is the amount of power they can output.

Foundation: 10W max
Intermediate: 50W max
Full: 400W max

However, this does not mean that a Full licence-holder can use 400W on any band - there are various restrictions based on frequency, and location.

UK callsigns start with G, M, or 2(and some letters). However, there are slight changes based on which part of the UK you are in. You're not one of those people that think that UK = GB = England*, are you? For example, a station G7VRD operating in Wales would become GW7VRD, or in Northern Ireland GI7VRD. The same occurs with M, but it is slightly different with the 2E prefix. There it changes to 2W or 2M (for Scotland).

The variations are:

• No extra letter - England
• W - Wales
• M - Scotland
• I - Northern Ireland (not to be confused with the Republic of Ireland)

Links

The official UK bandplan information is http://www.rsgb.org/spectrumforum/bandplans/RSGB%20Band%20Plan%20master.htm

• Great Britain is the island that Scotland, England, and Wales are on. The United Kingdom is often referred to as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands are British Crown Dependancies, and are slightly different.