Earlycallbook

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EARLY AMATEUR CALL BOOK, CIRCA 1914.
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This contribution comes from Deane Blackman, VK3TX, RAOTC member No 1378. We have précised and edited the
contribution for the web site but the full text will be published in the September 2006 issue of OTN magazine

Deane writes “My uncle, H. H. Blackman, (Bert), was born in 1886, and was active as an amateur from the earliest days of
wireless in Australia. I recall my father, 16 years his junior, describing how he watched his brother erect a large mast at
the family house in Osborne Avenue, East Malvern, then on the outskirts of Melbourne, to be used with his spark
transmitter.

During the Great War he served as a signaller, training with the Rolleston Company in Wiltshire, England, in the winter of
1916, and presumably saw service in France thereafter. After the war, he continued for a time with amateur activity using,
I have been told, the call sign VK3PR.

When he died, around 1970, I had the opportunity to go over the residue of his workshop. It had a lathe and other
machine tools, all sadly lacking use and rather dated. There remained only fragments of his radio equipment.

The shack was almost knee-deep in paper; for years he had just continued to throw magazines and other stuff in as he
finished with it. For form's sake I decided to go through this. It was like an archaeological dig - the deeper I went the older
the material. And then I struck gold in the form of a small book, published by the "Wireless Institute of Victoria" in 1914,
entitled "Wireless in Victoria". It is a soft-covered book of about 30 pages and measures 120 mm x 160 mm; it is what we
now know as a call book. Its preface claims it to be the first of its kind for Australia.

There are about 400 experimental stations listed. As a portent of the amateur future, the three-letter calls in New South
Wales run from XAA to XIZ, with four-letter calls beginning XA, and in Victoria XJA to XPZ with four-letter XJ calls.
Queenslanders were XQ, South Australians XV, Western Australians XY and Tasmanians XZ; there are only about 50 of
these latter calls.

In Victoria, as well as XOE (H. H. Blackman) I noticed these: XPJ (Wireless Institute of Victoria); XJDY (L A Adamson)
who was the formidable headmaster of Wesley College at this time; XJAD (C J Brown) who gives his address as
Melbourne Grammar School, and who I have been able to identify as a science teacher who taught there from 1904 until
1948(!). They were not all urbanites: XJED (H MacKinolty) was at Korumburra - before soldier settlement put at least a
sprinkling of farmers on the Strezlecki hills it must have been pretty isolated down there; and XJDV (T A Crerar) at
Hexham - there is not a lot there even now.

In NSW, XADK was the Wireless Institute of New South Wales, and enterprising was XACI, Rev Fr O'Reilly in Bathurst.
One name I do know, XIQ (E G Lampard): his son D G Lampard was the foundation professor in Electrical Engineering at
Monash University, and has named after him the capacitor which he discovered and which can be used as a calibration
standard. “

At Deane’s suggestion we are posting the amateur call signs here. If you know some of the stories of those listed please
let us know.