The “Worked All Heckington” award scheme will run for the duration of the 2025 Spring/Summer season, during our Monday evening PMR446 nets. For the first 45 minutes of each net, Andy MB (2E0VPX/26HL161) will call “CQ PMR446” from several squares, from which he will be operating, either mobile, bicycle mobile or portable.
The Awards
Anyone who manages to work Andy in 20 squares will get the Bronze Award. 40 squares will get you the Silver Award and 80 squares, will bag you the Gold Award. If Andy manages to activate all 100 squares (which will be a miracle!), there will be a Diamond award for anyone who gets all of them. If there is one person who works more than anyone else, there might even be a trophy!
Will you work them all?
With 100 squares to cover in IO92UX, and each square only several hundred metres across, it won’t be easy to activate them all. However, if it is achieved, this will probably be the first time (and possibly the last!) in history that radio has been transmitted from every part of Heckington. And if you work them all, you might just end up being the only person in history to have done so!
How does that work?
There are 100, eight-digit extended squares in IO92UX (Heckington’s home six-digit Maidenhead Locator square) – see the map below.
Over the coming months, Andy will be doing his best to visit (and ‘activate’) as many of these squares as he can, and to work as many of you as possible from them. He will keep a log of everyone he works, and a tally of the squares each of you manage. so that you don’t have to (though you can if you want!).
Some of the squares will be easier to ‘activate’ than others! Andy may visit the easier ones repeatedly but, the more difficult ones might only get a single visit. So, to catch them all, you’ll need to take part in the nets each week!
QSL
Everyone who achieves any of the awards will receive a limited edition Award QSL Card:-
Worked All Heckington Latest 31/3/25
Now, there’s a Bunker Bonus!
If activating the 100 extended squares in IO92UX isn’t enough, I’m also planning on activating 10 bunkers, all within 10 miles or so of Heckington. Work me at all 10 to get the ‘Heckington Bunker Hunter’ bonus award!
So, what are these bunkers?
All around Britain, there are thousands of disused underground facilities built at various times, for military, communication or monitoring purposes. Some have since been demolished or removed but many still exist, often sitting in the corner of a farmer’s field, long since forgotten by everyone but those who occasionally vandalise them, and the radio amateurs who like to ‘activate’ them as part of the ‘Bunkers On The Air’ programme(1).
Lincolnshire has a good collection of such sites, with many still in situ.
To supplement my ‘Worked All Heckington’ activity, I have identified ten sites to visit, all of them built during the Second World War, or later, during the 1950s and 1960s as part of Britain’s response to the Cold War. All have since been de-commissioned and sadly some have either been removed or are no longer visible from above ground. Others are not only still there and visible, but it is possible to climb down into a few, though I doubt that I will be doing that for fear of not being able to climb back out again!
Among the ten sites several are ‘ROC Posts’, built for the Royal Observer Corp during the Cold War and intended to give limited protection in the event of a nuclear strike. Some are control bunkers at decoy airfields. These airfields were intended to fool German bombers into targeting them, in order to draw them away from the real thing. One of the sites was intended to be an operational base for the British Resistance, in the event of invasion.
The sites I’ll be visiting are:-
- B/G-0500, ROC Post Sleaford – Present
- B/G-0503, ROC Post Billingborough – Demolished
- B/G-0505, ROC Post Billinghay – Present
- B/G-0507, ROC Post Heckington – Demolished (post forms the base of a mobile phone mast)
- B/G-0512, ROC Post Quadring Eaudyke – Present
- B/G-0513, ROC Post Conningsby – Present
- B/G-1454, Swineshead Auxiliary Unit Operational Base (British Resistance) – Present but very difficult to find (2)
- B/G-2052, RAF Folkingham Decoy Airfield, Q/K22a Control Bunker
- B/G-2106, Dorrington Decoy Airfield, Q21b Control Bunker
- B/G-2107, Frithville Decoy Airfield, Q18b Control Bunker
Map
So listen out of the Bunker Bonus activations! You never know when I might pop up at a bunker near you!