I have just been checking out the details of the latest version of VKCL (3.7) from Mike VK3AVV and on reading the JMFD notes page, found the following details...
"The use of Maidenhead locators has also been enhanced. It was noticed sometimes that the direction for maximum signal was not always the one given by VKCL for short distance stations.This is because the assumption that each station is in the centre of their locator can result in considerable error in the calculated direction between the stations if one or both are significantly away from the centre, almost 90 degrees in extreme case for adjacent locators. This becomes more important at UHF and above with the narrow beam dish antennas.
The Maidenhead standard
defines an additional two digital characters that may be added to make it an eight-character locator improving the calculation accuracy ten-fold. Useful particularly when you are on an edge of six-character locator, for example, QF22mf92, as you are now assumed to be in the centre of a much smaller locator 'square'. The use of eight-character locators is completely optional and you can ignore all this if you are not interested in direction to the station being worked. The 6-character locators are quite adequate for calculating the distance for scoring purposes."
More details on finding out your 8-char grid detail is provided further down that article. Please note that you must add the brackets to the lat/long detail else VKCL won't accept it. i.e. (-27.34546,152.12345)
The original document is at
http://www.mnds.com.au/vkcl/jmfd.htm so you can read it for yourself.
I was contemplating going somewhere fairly local and setting up for the 6 hour section but given that the VHF/UHF component is distance based, I will probably make the effort to go further away from Brisbane, weather permitting of course, but still only run the 6 hours. I will also take the microwave gear along since the rules don't specify any upper limit to the "UHF" bands, and Mike does talk about "This becomes more important at UHF and above with the narrow beam dish antennas" in the first paragraph above. Microwave frequencies seem to be included since that is the only spectrum where you use dish style antennas.
I
might even take the Signalink SL-1 interface box along so I can do something in the Digital mode arena - if time permits to set it up and try it on the logging PC beforehand plus making up some leads to suit the Icom radios.
