Loops Anyone?
A year ago, I moved from central Illinois to eastern Missouri. Or to put it another way, I switched grid squares from EM59ck to EM48qs, So, “What is a grid square?” you may ask. The ARRL offers this explanation:
An instrument of the Maidenhead Locator System (named after the town outside London where it was first conceived by a meeting of European VHF managers in 1980), a grid square measures 1° latitude by 2° longitude and measures approximately 70 × 100 miles in the continental U.S. A grid square is indicated by two letters (the field) and two numbers (the square), as in FN31, the grid square within which W1AW, ARRL’s Maxim Memorial Station, resides. <www.arrl.org/grid-squares>
Grid squares are frequently used by ham operators to transmit location. For example, digital modes like FT8 use grid squares as do VHF (very high frequency) operators. They are also used in radio contests
