Maritime Mobile Amateur Radio - Licensing

Licensing

The following notes are made with regard to the UK "Full" amateur radio licence terms, provisions and limitations, and so may vary slightly from other amateur licences.

Maritime mobile operation is defined as operating a transmitter that is located on any vessel at sea. This means any manned structure afloat outside of the high water mark. Operating on vessels on inland waterways is defined as mobile working, and so requires /M to be added to the callsign, not /MM as for maritime mobile operation.

There is a requirement that the amateur radio equipment must only be installed with the written permission of the vessel's master. This does not affect those who intend to install a transceiver on their own boat, but is relevant to anyone who intends to make transmissions from a ferry or other passenger ship. In such cases, the master of the ship has the right to demand radio silence from the amateur operator. There is no requirement to keep a log of calls, but a written record of information about frequencies, times, operators and their callsigns is in fact usually very valuable.

It is not a requirement that the station transmits its location, but of course this is advisable, and easy to do with on-board GPS location. UK amateurs have a system of regional secondary locators that they must use within UK territorial waters (e.g. adding D for Isle of Man, M for Scotland etc. in the second position in their callsign). In international waters, this is not necessary. When in the territorial waters of other countries, CEPT rules apply and these can get complex. The normal procedure is to prepend the national locator of the host country to the normal callsign, separated with another slash. So, amateur station A0AA, operating from a vessel within the territorial tidal waters of a country identified by the prefix B would identify itself as B/A0AA/MM when transmitting.

In international waters, amateur licensees must only use frequency bands allocated internationally by the ITU. In any country's territorial waters, they should abide by the frequency allocations and bandplans applicable to the host country.