Ofcom have announced areas where they are considering improving the clarity of the current licence and changes to improve both their management of amateur licensing as well as progression through the licence structure.

To assist Ofcom prepare for their consultation the RSGB is to run several Litmus Tests over the next few months to provide feedback to Ofcom prior to their setting up of their consultation questions.  To start this process the Society has created these discussion forums:
• Single call sign per station
• Regional Secondary Locator
• Suggestions for additional topics

Regarding the Regional Secondary Locator. Ofcom recently announced that they considered the current licence (issued from 2006) means those whose main station address is in England shouldn’t use the Regional Secondary Locator when operating in other Regions of the UK or in Crown dependencies such as the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, e.g. someone with an English callsign such as M0XXX should sign M0XXX/P when operating from Scotland not MM0XXX/P (note the /P suffix has been optional since 2006).

The RSGB intend to run further Litmus Tests on a number of subjects that come from Ofcom’s presentation, such as the use of /AM for telemetry, command and control, etc for uncrewed airborne platforms (balloons, small rockets, etc), Remote Station operation, licence progression, etc.  These will follow later in the autumn.

Read the RSGB licence review preparation
http://rsgb.org/main/rsgb-consultations/ofcom-consultations/licence-review-preparation/

To participate in the Ofcom Amateur Consultation discussions register on the RSGB Forum at
http://rsgbdata.net/litmus/