To find out about Maidenhead Grid squares, follow the link for a description from the ARRL.
My "home" station Maidenhead grid location in Centreville, Nova Scotia, Canada is FN75rc. My QTH in Cambridge, England. (grid JO02bf).
I wanted to find my grid location for my place in Cambridge, without a lot of effort. I don't own a GPS, and I did not have an Ordnance Survey map, only an A-Z mapbook which contains typical roadmaps.
One day while I was looking on the Internet for a map to give my boss of where I live, I noticed that at the bottom of the map there was the latitude and longitude of where I live.
Eukera!
For the UK, www.Streetmap.co.uk gives the Lat / Long of a place, which you can quickly find by typing in your Post Code. It is in the format: N52:13:07 E0:08:45 located below the map.
Write those values down onto a notepad. That's the first step done.
To convert this into your Maidenhead Grid square go to Amsat-NA's GridSquare Conversion which you type in your values and it can convert it into your grid square.
I entered:
| Latitude | ||||
| 52 (Degrees) | 13 (Minutes) | 7 (Seconds) | * N | |
| Longitude | ||||
| 0 (Degrees) | 8 (Minutes) | 45 (Seconds) | * E |
And hit the "Convert to Grid Square" button. Volià My Maidenhead grid square is JO02bf (letter, letter, digit, digit, letter, letter format).
No math skills required.
In Canada you can use the NRCan Topographic Map Search and I normally use the Search by Geographical Name. Provided by Centre for Topographic Information (Ottawa), Natural Resources Canada.
In USA you can use Geographic Names Information System: United States and Territories provided by the U.S. Geological Survey or U.S. Gazetteer provided by U.S. Census Bureau.
Hope this helps lazy hams find out where they are.
Please send amateur related emails to ve3tix "at" rac.ca.
73 (Best Regards) de ve3tix