Club Log support staffed by volunteers

Author: Alan, 5B4AHJ

Individual Callsigns - 2R, GR, MR

To celebrate the marriage of H.R.H Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton, on 2011-04-29, UK radio amateurs could apply to use a special temporary callsign during the period 2011-04-29 to 2011-05-09. Dates are British Summer Time (GMT+1). Successful applicants were issued with a Notice of Variation (NOV).

Please note: These special temporary calls were intended for personal callsigns only, not for club callsigns. However, some clubs applied for these calls. Some had their application refused, but some had NOVs issued in error. A discussion with Ofcom (not by me) has confirmed this, and club calls using a GR/MR/2R prefix are breaking their licence terms, even if they have an NOV. Thanks to G3YMC for this information.

Callsign format

The format of these SES callsigns was as follows:

• 2D, 2E, 2G, 2I, 2J, 2M, 2U, 2W prefix callsigns all used 2R prefixes.
• G, GD, GI, GJ, GM, GU, GW prefix callsigns all used GR prefixes.
• M, MD, MI, MJ, MM, MU, MW prefix callsigns all used MR prefixes.

The digit and suffix of all SES callsigns were the same as the licensee's normal callsign.

Callsign mapping

From the above, it is clear that the DXCC entity of a station cannot be determined from the callsign. Club Log maps all these callsigns to England, unless a callsign exception exists for the station.

GB callsigns

In addition to the individual special temporary calls, some GB special event calls were issued.

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to help clarify which special calls are QRV from which DXCC entity.

It is envisaged that this information will be used by those responsible for maintaining logging software country files, and also to enable individual hams to ensure that they log the calls with the correct DXCC entity.

Note to logging software authors: when updating your country files, you need to use 2011-04-28 as the start date, to allow for QSOs in the period 0000-0059 BST on 2011-04-29, which is 2300-2359 GMT on 2011-04-28.

A total of over 2,400 NOVs were issued. It is not practical to list all of these callsigns. The table below, shows all callsigns with the exception of those in England, although I have included a few English callsigns which may be of special interest.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all contributors to this page, and especially QRZ.COM, KE8G, KD8CMB.

List of SES callsign exceptions (Club Log has callsign exceptions for all these callsigns)