---
id: "maidenhead_locator"
kind: "datatype"
status: "draft"
is_pii: false
categories: ["geo"]
langs: ["common"]
quality: 75
url: "http://registry.apicrafter.io/datatype/maidenhead_locator"
---

# Maidenhead locator (QTH locator) (`maidenhead_locator`)

> **Draft.** Draft records have not been reviewed yet and may be incomplete or wrong; do not treat them as authoritative for legal or compliance decisions.

Grid square of the Maidenhead Locator System, used by radio amateurs to give a station position; the IARU adopted it in 1980. Pairs of characters give longitude then latitude: a field of two letters A to R (20 by 10 degrees), a square of two digits, a subsquare of two letters A to X and an extended square of two digits, giving two, four, six or eight characters. Field letters are upper case; subsquare letters are often written in lower case. A two-character locator looks like many other two-letter codes.

- Personal data (PII): no
- Categories: Geographic identifiers (geo)
- Countries: global
- Languages: Common to most languages (common)
- Classification: identifier

## Detection

Regular expression (Python `re`):

```
^[A-R]{2}(?:\d{2}(?:[A-Xa-x]{2}(?:\d{2})?)?)?$
```

## Examples

- `FN31pr` — Station W1AW of the ARRL in Newington, Connecticut (Wikipedia)
- `KN28LH` — Six-character locator from Wikipedia
- `BL11BH16` — Eight-character locator from Wikipedia
- `FN31` — Four-character square
- `SN31` (invalid example) — Field letters end at R
- `FN31PZ` (invalid example) — Subsquare letters end at X
- `FN3` (invalid example) — Odd number of characters

## Sources

- wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidenhead_Locator_System>

## Quality

Score 75/100. Missing: mapping (Wikidata, Schema.org, ...), translation, detector coverage.

JSON: <http://registry.apicrafter.io/api/v1/datatypes/maidenhead_locator.json> · Edit: <https://github.com/apicrafter/metacrafter-registry/edit/main/data/datatypes/any/geo/maidenhead_locator.yaml>