Message-ID: <004101c51e54$11e9fa80$2101a8c0@AUG2004>
From: "Walter Blanchard" <blanch@pncl.co.uk>
To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
References: <200502271724500058.0418698B@mail.zetnet.co.uk><005001c51cf8$524d6c40$10b80150@p2300> <200502281113330523.07EADBD4@mail.zetnet.co.uk> <007201c51d8c$ab993a60$37b80150@p2300>
Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 11:44:44 -0000
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Subject: LF: Locators
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In 1968 I had a long-running correspondence with the RSGB over the IARU 
adoption of what was then the "QRA Locator"; later to become the 
"Maidenhead" locator.  QRA was first proposed for amateur use by a Czech 
amateur OK1VR in 1958 and was subsequently adopted by amateurs in all the 
Warsaw Pact countries. I believe it originated in a USSR military locator 
system already well understood by them. The Western (NATO) counterpart was 
the GEOREF system which I described in an RSGB Bulletin article in 1968. The 
RSGB VHF committee at the time were, somewhat amazingly, unaware of GEOREF 
and thought that QRA was a totally amateur invention. When I started pushing 
for GEOREF, a more logical, accurate and simpler system, I was more or less 
told to keep quiet and stop rocking the boat since the IARU were going for 
QRA and that was that. The rest, as they say, is history.  I forecast at the 
time that QRA would never have the accuracy required for accurate contest 
scoring and that's why Maidenhead has become so needlessly complicated. We 
could also have gone for the well-established world-wide UTM grid but I 
suppose that would have been too easy. It's all too late to do anything now, 
of course, but I have never met a professional geodesist who understands why 
we need Maidenhead. .

Walter G3JKV.