UK

UK Amateur Radio information

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.

Power limits

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.

Callsign variations

UK callsigns start with G, M, or 2. 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 and 2.

The variations are:

• No extra letter - England
• W - Wales
• M - Scotland
• I - Northern Ireland (not to be confused with the Republic of Ireland)
• U - Guernsey
• J - Jersey
• D - Isle of Man

Links

The official UK bandplan information is: http://www.rsgb.org/spectrumforum/bandplans/RSGB%20Band%20Plan%20master.htm
The UK Repeater Group maintains lists and maps of all the repeaters in the UK: http://www.ukrepeater.net/
The UK 6 metre group: http://uksmg.org/

• Great Britain is the island that the countries 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 Dependencies, and are slightly different.