Operating Away From Home: Cross-Region Rules, Reciprocity, and Moving QTH
The question everyone asks
“I passed the exam and got my license in province A. Now I’m working in province B — can I just use my handheld there?”
The answer is neither a clean yes nor a clean no. It depends on two things: whether your station has a fixed location, and what the location and scope field on your license says.
The dividing line: fixed location or not
China’s Measures for the Administration of Amateur Radio Stations (MIIT Order No. 67, in force 1 March 2024) split application jurisdiction in Article 10:
- Stations with a fixed location apply to the regulator of the province where the station is located.
- Stations without a fixed location apply to the regulator of the applicant’s place of residence.
Handhelds and vehicle-mounted mobile radios fall in the second category; your home station falls in the first. The logic follows from the split: a fixed station is tied to a site, so it is licensed where the site is; a mobile station is tied to a person, so it is licensed where the person lives.
Article 24: the notification mechanism
The more consequential provision is Article 24. When a station without a fixed location will be used in an area beyond the province of the applicant’s residence, the regulator that issued the license notifies counterpart regulators in the relevant provinces of the license issuance and call sign allocation.
Read that carefully: the notification is a job for the regulators. You do not re-apply in the province you are visiting.
There is a documented example. The Luzhou (Sichuan) municipal industry bureau, answering an inquiry, confirmed that a licensee using a station without a fixed location — handheld or vehicle-mounted — does not need to re-obtain or amend a Sichuan license to operate in Luzhou. The Chongqing regulator that issued the license notifies its Sichuan counterpart, and operation is lawful.
Your call sign does not change
Cross-province use does not involve a new call sign either. Under the one-person-one-call-sign principle in Article 18, you keep your existing call sign when operating away from home; repeaters and beacons are excepted, since those are licensed separately.
But there is a matching obligation, spelled out in Fujian’s published guidance: operate strictly within the location and scope stated on your license, and do not exceed the licensed operating area. Put the two together and the rule is complete — the call sign stays the same, but whether you may transmit depends entirely on that one field on the license.
How the scope field gets filled in
Since everything hinges on the location and scope field, how it is written matters. Hebei’s industry department, answering a similar inquiry, described the practice: for stations without a fixed location, the applicant writes the intended operating scope into the field — for example, “Hebei Province” or “nationwide.” And if the intended area exceeds the province of residence, the application must include a statement of necessity, typically covering the need for cross-province operation, photos of the proposed radio and antenna, and — for vehicle-mounted use — photos of the vehicle including its plate number.
The practical lesson: get cross-province use written into the license at application or amendment time, rather than trying to explain it afterward.
A stricter interpretation exists
Some guidance reads more conservatively. A Qinghai provincial Q&A states that driving tours involving cross-province mobile transmission require prior application to, and approval from, the relevant regulator, and stresses that amateur stations may only transmit at the location specified on the license — if the license says “limited to use within this city,” you may not operate beyond the city boundary.
That kind of wording shows up in older public-education material and reflects the enforcement posture of its time. It does not contradict Articles 10 and 24, since both boil down to “operate within what your license says.” The difference is whether you handle it through advance notification between regulators or by writing a wider scope into the application.
The bottom line: your license’s actual wording governs, provincial practice varies, and a quick inquiry to your regulator before an extended trip costs nothing.
Practical checklist for China
- Read your license first. Find the location and scope field. “Limited to this city,” “limited to this province,” or wider — that field decides whether you can transmit.
- No fixed location, and you want to operate across provinces regularly? Ask your residential regulator about widening the scope, and prepare the necessity statement with vehicle photos.
- Already living in another province with a fixed station? Apply at the station’s new location rather than keeping the old license.
- Short trips with a handheld? Confirm with your home regulator whether any extra step is needed. Do not default to “nobody will check.”
- Moving provinces? Handle the fixed station’s paperwork; do not leave the old license hanging on the old address.
The international layer: reciprocity
Everything above concerns moving within one country. Crossing a border is a different regime, and the good news is that it has become much easier.
Article 25 of the ITU Radio Regulations governs the amateur service, and administrations increasingly recognize each other’s licenses. The best-known framework is CEPT Recommendation T/R 61-01, born from a 1985 CEPT initiative, revised in 1992 to open participation to non-CEPT administrations, and revised again in October 2003 after WRC-03 removed the Morse requirement — which collapsed its license classes from two to one. Holders of a qualifying CEPT amateur licence may operate during short visits in other participating countries without obtaining an individual license there.
Three things visitors routinely get wrong:
- The privileges you operate under are those of the country being visited, not your home country. A license that permits 1.5 kW at home does not entitle you to it abroad.
- You prepend the visited country’s prefix to your own call sign. A UK operator visiting the United States identifies as W4/G9KLM, not just G9KLM.
- Not every CEPT administration implements every version of the recommendation, and individual countries attach extra conditions as footnotes. Verify before you travel.
For longer stays, CEPT Recommendation T/R 61-02 — the HAREC certificate — facilitates issuance of a full local license. In the Americas, the OAS/CITEL International Amateur Radio Permit (IARP) plays a similar role. Where no multilateral scheme exists, bilateral agreements often do: under the US–Canada agreement, a Canadian operating in the United States adds the country prefix at the end of the call sign, as in VE9KLM/W1. If none of these apply, approaching the host regulator directly sometimes still yields a visitor license.
Before you operate abroad
- Carry your license and examination certificate; you will be asked to prove CEPT equivalence.
- Check the host country’s band plan and power limits — those are the ones that apply.
- Learn the local identification convention before your first QSO.
- Remember that licensing says nothing about customs: importing equipment is a separate question, and T/R 61-01 does not address it.
- When in doubt, ask the IARU member society or the national regulator in the country you are visiting.
The short version
Regulation exists so that every active frequency has an owner and can be traced to a specific person. Following the rules is usually not difficult. The difficulty comes when you wait until an interference complaint forces you to catch up.
References
- MIIT (China), Measures for the Administration of Amateur Radio Stations, Order No. 67, in force 1 March 2024 — Articles 10, 18, and 24.
- Luzhou Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology (Sichuan), reply on use of an out-of-province amateur license in Luzhou, Luzhou government Q&A platform, April 2026.
- Hebei Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology, reply on cross-region setup by stations without a fixed location, provincial executive mailbox, n.d.
- IARU, Operating Abroad (iaru.org) — T/R 61-01 practice, HAREC, and prefix conventions, accessed October 2026.
- CEPT/ECC, Recommendation T/R 61-01 (CEPT Radio Amateur Licence), current text via the European Radiocommunications Office, accessed October 2026.
- ITU-R, Handbook on the Amateur and Amateur-Satellite Services, 2014 — mutual recognition of licenses, the IARP, and Article 25.