Editing Maidenhead Locator System (section)

==Hardware and software support==
In 1985, the Radio Society of Great Britain published a small set of [[BASIC]] language routines to convert from locator references to geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude) for further processing.<ref>
{{cite book
 |first=John, GM4ANB |last=Morris
 |year=1985
 |title=Amateur Radio Software
 |pages=129–161
 |publisher=Radio Society of Great Britain
 |isbn=0-900612-71-1
 |place=Potters Bar, UK
}}
</ref> A complete program in BASIC called ''Universal Gridlocator'' was made available the following year by ARRL for a nominal cost of US$3.<ref>
{{cite magazine
 |first=Wayne |last=Overbeck
 |title = A universal grid-locator program for your personal computer
 |date=December 1986
 |magazine=QST Magazine
 |pages = 30–31
 |publisher=[[American Radio Relay League]]
 |place=Newington, CT
}}
</ref>

Many other utilities exist to convert latitude and longitude to locators, as this is a favourite [[Hack (technology slang)|hack]] for programmers who are also radio amateurs. [[Perl]] supports conversion between geographical coordinates and Maidenhead locators in module Ham::Locator by Andy Smith, available on [[CPAN]].<ref>
{{cite web
 |title=Ham Locator v&nbsp;0.1000
 |series=CPAN module
 |url=http://search.cpan.org/~meh/Ham-Locator-0.1000/lib/Ham/Locator.pm 
 |website=cpan.org
}}
</ref>

The Python maidenhead module is on pypi.org for installation via pip.<ref>
{{cite web
 |title=maidenhead – PyPI
 |url=https://pypi.org/project/maidenhead/
 |website=pypi.org
}}
</ref>

Many{{which|date=April 2024}} commercially available general purpose (civil) [[Global Positioning System]] (GPS) receivers (e.g. Garmin GPS-12) have the option to display positions in Maidenhead Locator format.<ref>
{{cite web
 |first=L.A., N7CFO |last=Burlingame
 |year=2010
 |title=GPS units that support the Maidenhead grid system
 |website=n7cfo.com
 |url=http://www.n7cfo.com/vhf/gps/~gps.htm
 |access-date=9 September 2012
}}
</ref>{{update inline|date=April 2024|reason=The GPS-12 has been out of production for about 15 years.}}