UKBOTA Rules and Guidance 2025

UKBOTA 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 Activations

  • 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 maxmimum UKBOTA permit) by all overlap and in the area were they *all* overlap then all 5 may be activated for a 5fer.

Activating for other award schemes at the same time as UKBOTA

  • UKBOTA strongly enourages multischeme activations, eg. 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. 

Awards in Outline

Awards for Activators, Hunters and Short Wave listeners.

  • UKBOTA offers a wide range of awards with differeing in duration, complexity and requirements. More details on specific awards can be found on the awards page.
  • The two main awards available to participants in UKBOTA are  Lifetime Awards and Annual Awards.

Lifetime Awards – in outline

  • Lifetime Awards are for activating (activator), working (hunter) or hearing (SWL) a bunker once in a lifetime, ie. each individual UKBOTA bunker only scores once in a lifetime no matter how many time it is activating or worked. 
  • More information on Lifetime Awards is at the Awards page.

Annual Awards – in outline

  • Annual Awards may be claimed once each calendar year (eg. 2025). In the case of Annual awards each bunker will score once each calendar month (eg. January 2025, February 2025 and so on), therefore the maximum number of times the bunker will ‘score’ for an individual activator or hunter is 12.
  • More information on Lifetime Awards is at the Awards page.

Where are the UKBOTA bunkers?

List and Mapping

  • 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 on the Bunker Dashboard of BunkerBase (www.bunkerbase.org). From the Bunker Dashboard the list can be sorted, filtered and searched, additionally the list can be exported as a CSV, XLS or PDF file.
  • 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 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

Spotting

  • The best place to find current activations is by using the WWBOTA ‘Cluster’ tool (requires registration) available here: www.wwbota.org/cluster
  • Note that registration to the WWBOTA cluster is different to that required for BunkerBase.
  • UKBOTA bunkers are also usually spotted on the WhatsApp WWBOTA Spots and Alerts channel.
  • Some activations are also spotted on the DX Cluster. 

Logging and recording QSO

General Points

  • UKBOTA is based on trust. Unlike other awards schemes we do not automatically extract hunter QSOs from activators logs. Advantages of this method is that less effort is required on the part of the activator (eg. to get log files into the correct format), and that hunters can claim all bunkers they have worked without delay and without relying on an activator uploading anything. The small disadvantage is that the hunter is required to keep track of what they have worked! On balance we find this method gives well, treats participants like adults, and give flexibility and immediacy.

Activators

  • Activators are free to log QSO in any way they chose. Some prefer pen and paper, others like to use electronic loggers. At present the most popular electronic logger used by activators is Portable Logger (PoLo) by Ham2K, this is currently only available for Android and iOS devices. PoLo can be downloaded here: https://www.ham2k.com/
  • Uploading of ADIF, CSV or other files is not required by UKBOTA, however, activators may upload their files if they wish.
  • Activators are strongly encouraged to create an account on our awards portal at www.bunkerbase.org. Using the Activator Dashboard on BunkerBase the Activator can complete a simple form to record their activation and, if they wish, upload their log.

Hunters and SWL

  • Activators are free to log QSO in any way they chose. Some prefer pen and paper, others like to use electronic loggers such as Log4OM and Logger32.
  • Hunters and SWL are strongly encouraged to create an account on our awards portal at www.bunkerbase.org. Using the Hunter Dashboard on BunkerBase the Hunter or SWL Activator can complete a simple form to record bunker QSO.

Trackers

  • Currently BunkerBase only shows Lifetime and Annual Awards. Some events or special award have ‘trackers’ avaiable to assist with keeping a record of QSO and scores. These trackers are in the form of spreadsheet files, their use is not mandatory but many do find the useful.

Awards

Our Awards

  • All UKBOTA awards are electronic. On making a successful claim a pdf of the award certificate will be sent. The pdf file will be in A4 format, many award recipients like to print and display their awards.

How to make an award claim

  • All award claims should be made to the UKBOTA Awards Manager: Mark M0XIC at awards@ukbota.org

Getting Help

General 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

Technical Help

  • For more specific technical help, eg. if you are having issues with logging into BunkerBase you should contact Phil our IT Manager and Webmanager at webmaster@ukbota.org
UKBOTA