UK Military Stations on 60m

Communicating with UK Military Stations

The 5MHz NoV sets a licence condition that for the first time allows UK Amateurs to establish communication with military or military cadet stations. Such stations have an operating procedure that is based upon the four concepts of BREVITY, ACCURACY, SECURITY, and SPEED - or “BASS” for short, thus please respect their operating procedure.

Note that Air Cadet and Sea Cadet stations use M-prefix 3-letter call signs, usually followed by two digits, whilst Army Cadet stations use one or two figure call signs, sometimes followed by a letter. The military stations are not allowed to give their unit name, location, or the operator’s name. It is hoped that they may be allowed some flexibility with respect to QTH locators. Cadet stations may be heard working each other on frequencies close to ours, but it is NOT permitted for amateurs to contact cadets on such frequencies.

Assessment of SINPO

Whilst the traditional RS(T) report can be given at the start of a contact to give the other station some idea of the likely quality of the subsequent contact for the purposes of the experiment, we require a more detailed and follow the ITU recommendation that SINPO reporting is used, as defined in their current document SM.1135.

The S (signal level) report, on a scale of 1 – 5, is effectively an assessment of how well the signal stands out above the background receiver noise. Details of the assessment are given in Table 2 below. Note that we ask that you record a “not heard” as S=1, when it is known that the station is actually transmitting on channel.

	S	I	N	P	O
Rating	Signal	Degrading effect of			Overall
scale	strength	Interference	Noise	Propagation disturbance	rating
5	Excellent	Nil	Nil	Nil	Excellent
4	Good	Slight	Slight	Slight	Good
3	Fair	Moderate	Moderate	Moderate	Fair
2	Poor	Severe	Severe	Severe	Poor
1	Barely audible	Extreme	Extreme	Extreme	Unusable

If You already heard stations using for example MRN prefixes on 60m and You would like to learn more about then check the link as follows: Fivemegs Experiment

73 - Petr, OK1RP