Finding Grid Square Locators

Contacts, Contests, Misc

Note: I have written a page at http://www.levinecentral.com/ham/grid_square.php which does exactly what you might need. Check it out.

When I log a contact (I use HRD) I like to populate the grid square locator so that it shows the approximate distance between me and the contact. There’s a bunch of ways it can get populated and here’s what I use.

1) QRZ.com individual callsign contact data often has the grid square for a contact. If it does, HRD pulls it in. It only needs to be adjusted if the operator isn’t at his home station, such as when I operated from North Carolina.

2) In digital modes like RTTY or PSK, the contact often provides his grid square as part of the contact.

3) I use the QRZ.com GridFinder page at http://www.qrz.com/gridfinder where I have the most luck as long as I have a portion of the address. Most of the time this one site provides what is needed.

4) Next is site which is map based. http://f6fvy.free.fr/qthLocator/fullScreen.php where I can often locate, within reason, the approximate location of the contact. Also good if a contact is mobile and provides you an approximate location. You can then obtain the grid square. An example was a marine mobile station that provided his approx coords and distance off shore.  I just wish this site had a way to enter in a location like Google maps to get you close to a spot quickly.

5) A final shot is at http://www.vhfdx.net/callbook/ where you can look up by call sign and see if it’s listed along with a 6 or 4 digit grid square. I’ve used this when I didn’t have anything but the call sign and there’s not record or no relevant data on QRZ.

With the combination of the above, except in maybe 2 cases so far, I’ve been able to come up with a gris square value for the contact.

Some other references:
http://www.geocities.com/vhfdx2/gridqra.html for printable maps.
http://www.arrl.org/locate/gridinfo.html is ARRL’s reference with some maps.
http://www.g4xgt.co.uk/Grid%20locator.html is another quick responding Google map version.
http://no.nonsense.ee/qthmap/ another Google map locator.
http://ric.cqham.ru/ for looking up grid squares for Russian call signs.

If you are aware of others, post them as a comment.

73, K2DSL

1 thought on “Finding Grid Square Locators”

  1. Hello David,

    Thanks for linking to my Maidenhead WWL grid page qth.map.googlepages.com

    Because of changes to Google Sites functionality I had to move the
    page to another server.

    In addition to that I added some functionality:

    — distance lines between two squares are now geodesic — the shortest
    path between two points along the surface of the Earth
    — display of bearing information between two squares
    — calculation of midpoint along the geodesic line — to help those
    who use aeroplanes’ reflections for making contact

    I would appreciate if you could update the information at your page as
    well and point the web link to:

    http://no.nonsense.ee/qthmap/

    In case you would like to link directly to the location of your QTH,
    you can do that as well. Just navigate to the view you would like to
    link to and use the links inside info bubble, like this one:

    http://no.nonsense.ee/qthmap/?qth=KO29IK92GJ

    Best regards,
    —
    Joosep-Georg Järvemaa
    ES1PUMP

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