UKBOTA Rules and Guidance 2025

General Rules

Safety and Permissions

  • Activators are strongly advised to seek permission from land owners and to conduct a personal safety assessment before conducting an activation.
  • The listing of of a bunker on our UKBOTA reference list does not in anyway indicate that a bunker, or the vicinity of a bunker, is either safe or legal to enter. Always ask permission. 
  • UKBOTA accepts no responsibility for any issues arising from the activation of a bunker, eg. failing to ensure appropriate access to a site or for matters regarding personal safety.

Terminology

  • The abbreviation UKBOTA is Copyright and refers to the United Kingdom Bunkers On the Air Award Scheme.
  • For the purposes of UKBOTA, a bunker is 20th Century fortified or hardened structure for the purposes of positional defence, observation or crisis management. Types of bunkers included in the UKBOTA list include: Royal Observer Corps HQ and Observation Posts, Declassified military and civil defence bunkers, storage and utility bunkers, Airfield Battle HQ, blast shelters, air raid shelters and some pillboxes. Many bunkers are undergound, but by no means all. 
  • A UKBOTA Bunker ‘reference’ is a bunker listed on the UKBOTA Master List, the latest version of the list can be found at www.bunkerbase.org on the Bunker Dashboard.
  • An activator is a station conducting amateur radio operations from a UKBOTA referenced bunker.
  • A hunter is a station chasing activator stations, i.e. conducting QSOs with stations located at UKBOTA bunkers as listed in the UKBOTA Master List. 
  • VHF in the context of UKBOTA awards refers to any band above, and inclusive of, 6m (50MHz).
  • A QSO between two activators at two different bunkers is referred to as a ‘bunker to bunker QSO’ or ‘B2B’ for short. 
  • In some cases it will be possible for an activator to activate more than one bunker at a time. The maximum permitted is 5 at a time. Multi-bunker activation, eg. an activation of 5 bunkers, is often shortened to ‘5fer’ etc.

Valid UKBOTA QSO

  • A valid QSO requires the two stations to send callsigns and signal reports and acknowledge the receipt of  (ie. repeat) the signal report given. This is the minimum for a valid QSO. Third party assistance with callsigns is permitted however a third party passing on (ie. relaying) signal reports will make a QSO invalid.
  • Whilst the QSO exchange above describes the minimum requirement for a QSO many activators will chose to give other information. Where possible it is often useful, and of interest to the hunter, to describe a little about the history/geography of the bunker(s) being activated.
  • The use of WebSDR to receive signal reports under poor band conditions is not permitted.
  • The use of remote stations by hunter is permitted.
  • The use of repeaters is not permitted.
  • Activators and hunters may use any amateur radio band and mode their licence permits.
  • Operating outside individual licence conditions will render a QSO invalid.
  • UKBOTA strongly encourages participants to observe the DX Code of Conduct details of which can be found here: https://www.iaru-r1.org/on-the-air/spectrum-abuse/dx-code-of-conduct/

Valid UKBOTA Activation

  • Generally, an activator requires 25 QSOs on HF or mixed HF/VHF, or 5 on VHF only, to make an activation valid and these activations can be completed over different days. QSO on different bands with the same hunter count as an additional QSO towards the validation requirement. QSO using different modes with the same hunter do not count as an additional QSO towards the validation requirement (unless they occur on a different day). Whilst these general rules cover most awards specific award requirements should also be checked as they may differ.
  • An activator may not activate from the fixed home station even if it falls within the activation zone, there are two exceptions:
    1. An activator may activate from their property if it falls within the activation zone if they are operating away from their main shack and using battery power and not using their main station antennas, eg. ‘garden portable’ or operating from your driveway in your car with mobile radio and antenna.
    2. An activator may activate from a bunker activation zone, using mains power and a fixed antenna providing that either a Special Event Callsign or Club Callsign is used.
  • The use of /P and /M appended to the callsign is no longer required under UK licence conditions and is, therefore, not mandatory for UKBOTA activations.
  • The use of Regional Secondary callsign prefixes (eg. GM for Scotland) is no longer required following recent changes to UK licence conditions, however, activators are enouraged to use regional prefixes by UKBOTA.
  • An activator must be ‘activating the bunker’, it is not sufficient to ‘know’ that a station is in an activation zone, if they are not specifically conducting a bunker activation, for it to count as a valid UKBOTA QSO.
  • The activation zone for a UKBOTA bunker is 1000m, ie. the activator must be within 1000m from the location of the bunker shown on the UKBOTA list. Where possible many activators like to operate from as close to a bunker as possible, noting the importance of safety and site permissions.
  • A hunter and activator may be within the activation zone of the same bunker for a valid QSO.

Activating more than one bunker at a time

  •  Some bunkers are close together and where there activations zone intersect, ie. within the ‘overlap area’ it is possible to activate both bunkers. In some cases up 5 bunkers (the maximum UKBOTA permit) by all overlap and in the area were they *all* overlap then all 5 may be activated for a 5fer.

Activating other schemes at the same time as UKBOTA

  • UKBOTA strongly encourages multi-scheme activations, e.g. where the activation location allows, for the activation of a POTA Park, Lighthouse and UKBOTA bunker simultaneously.
  • Activators are encouraged to check the rules of other schemes for their specific rules and guidelines. 

Where are the UKBOTA Bunkers?

  • You have two choices of mapping.
    1. A Google Earth overly (KMZ file) can be downloaded from our downloads area here:
    2. The excellent Portable Ham Map by Steven M1SDH can be viewed on our homepage, the BunkerBase Bunker Dashboard, or at this direct link: https://kwirk.github.io/pota-gb-map/ This map is extremely useful as it allows the user to overlay multiple award scheme references simultaneously, eg. POTA, SOTA and UKBOTA.
  • Most users use both mapping options: Google Earth is good if you don’t have an internet connection and have the KMZ saved locally on your mobile device (eg. phone or tablet). Portable Ham Map requires an internet connection.
  • The latest version of the UKBOTA Bunker ‘reference’ list can be found via the link on the homepage.
  • New bunkers are added to the UKBOTA list from time to time. A message will placed on Facebook and the WhatsApp group requesting proposals for new bunker reference (or amendments to existing ones) when updates are planned. 

A word on Worked all Britain (WAB)

  • WAB refers to the Worked All Britain awards scheme. More information on WAB can be found here: https://wab.intermip.net/default.php
  • UKBOTA activators are encouraged to know their WAB square and to exhange that information during a QSO.
  • UKBOTA activators may activate by calling into the WAB Net but special care should be taken not to ‘take over’ and dominate the net. We ask that UKBOTA activations are not spotted on a WAB Net frequency. Good practice, if the activator wishes to call into the WAB Net, is to do so at the beginning or end of an activation, and to only work the stations on the Net at the time of checking in, before QSYing to a different frequency to work any other hunters.

Spotting and finding an activation

  • The best place to find current activations is by using the WWBOTA ‘Cluster’ tool (requires registration) available here: www.wwbota.org/cluster
  • Spots can be made using the WWBOTA cluster, or using the self spot function in Ham2K Portable Logger.
  • Note that registration to the WWBOTA cluster is different to that required for UKBOTA.
  • UKBOTA bunkers spotted via Ham2K or on the cluster are automatically forwarded to the WWBOTA Spots and Alerts WhatsApp Group

Getting help

  • The best and quickest place to ask for help is one of our community forums. We have an active community and in most cases your question will be answered quickly on our Facebook Group or on our our UKBOTA WhatsApp Group.
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