Copy of some letters from Ross Hull, 3JU to Trevor Watkins, 7AA 38 Charnwood Rd St Kilda 24-3-23 Dear Mr Watkins I regret not having written to you before this but I have been extremely busy & waited until I had a spare half hour since in no less time could I do your excellent report justice. I will commence by saying that your results have far & away surpassed the wildest expectations of any of us, and that we all, now, have the highest regard for your ability as an experimenter & an operator. And speaking of keen experimenters, I had not the slightest idea that ay one person could possess the enthusiasm that you have shown. I sincerely advise you to enter for the transpacific tests, since the reception of some of the stations during the test was, I should say, quite equal to the higher power over the longer distance. The man who is leading the test is H.K.Love - Ferncroft Avenue, E. Malvern & he will give you all the details. He was station JUMP in our test - 3BM. I will give you list of stations. HIGH 3BY H.Holst (you know him) FORD 3JU yours truly GOAT 3BD H.Cox Elsternwick (forgotten the street) MORE 3MC S.N.Newman (Amalgamated Wireless) STAN 3AM Dorhmann - Hopetown Av Canterbury JUMP 3BM H.K.Love LONG 3BQ Max Howden Hill St, Box Hill Stan also sent code by mistake. We each sent 10 wds from the leading article of the "Argus" & your log was word perfect in several cases. We all have gone most carefully through your log & have gleaned every piece of information from it, and everytime I go through it I am more & more impressed with the excellence of your reception. Your reception of the phone from 3BY JU & MC is nothing short of marvellous since on 'phone my input has not yet been above 5 watts & on the Thursday was about 3.5 I will give you a rough description of the stations. 3BY will no doubt have described his set to you before this. He has an excellent aerial radiation .8 3JU is well known to you I think, am still on the electrolytic rectifier. 3BD is similar to us - one 5 watt tube E. Rectifier & 3 wire L aerial about 40' x 80' long. radiates about .3 - .4 on 8 watts input. 3MC uses R valve for transmitting & has very low input - uses a DC generator at 500 - 600 volts. He has the best aerial here & is in an ideal site & uses the best of everything & is really not an "amateur" at all. However his results are very good. 3AM uses a 20 watt "Mullard" and E. Rectifier but gets very poor radiation 3BM used 5 watter & E.R. radiates about .4 on 8 watts 3BQ is ditto ditto and radiates ditto. So you see that there is nothing wonderful over herein the way of transmitters, & that the results are mainly due to your reception. I saw a list in our "Argus" re reception by a Hobart man and wondered who it was. There is no need to warn me of Monks.[last sentence underlined] His doings are public property among amateurs here & you need not imagine that I would carry out any arrangements with him. I am glad you are getting a club going over there - I take quite an interest in the W.I.A. here being Vice President & believe that a decent club is a great help. Please accept my best wishes for the success of the undertaking. I would be very grateful if you could arrange a test from your end - that transmitter of yrs should be O.K. here. I can assure you that there will be plenty of listening from this side for you so please make some times - any times from 7pm to 7am & we will fall in line. By the way if you could make a time say 4 or 5 in the morning for a two way test we would be only too glad and it would undoubtedly rid us of X's & QRM at both ends. Hope your R.F. is O.K. I have used mine for about 9 months now - 2 stages & det. & you can't beat it. (except by your single valve) I advise you to keep to the lower wave & next week end C.Hiam & myself are installing our 7 stage R.F. & separate oscillator for the T.P. Tests, so we can try it on you!!!? So please arrange plenty of times & fire away & we will see what can be done. Several others are installing similar sets, but am afraid they will be a bit hard to operate since all the R.F. trans. are tuned. MacLurcan & Jack Pike in Sydney - 2CM "heard"[underlined] 3 of us one night so we called him. He also heard 3BY & MC on two other nights. I an anxious to meet your friend Mr Glew & would like to get in touch with some Adelaide chaps. Newman wrote to the 'op' at VIA re the present tests - Sund, Mon, Wed.& asked him to let someone know. Our transmitters are just straightforward so am afraid I can't give you any further details, you asked for but here is my circuit [cct] have given up centre tap on H.V. transformer & use circuit shown [bridge rect] The mod. trans. is made from "Ford coil secondary & new prim. of 300 turns of 28 S.C.C The success of the E. rectifier depends on the pureness of the Aluminium & also in putting in new Borax after the plates are first formed. Will close now & will again give you my heartiest thanks for your splendid co-operation. Best wishes for all your future work & don't forget to arrange plenty of tests from your side & let us know if there is anything in which we can assist you in any way at all since we are greatly indebted to you. Yours sincerely Ross A Hull p.s. we are writing you a memo signed by the lot & will forward you a P.Note to defray the cost of telegrams. Am enclosing a cutting from the "Argus" of Saturday last. 38 Charnwood Rd St Kilda 15 - 4 - 23. Dear Mr Watkins, Many thanks for your excellent report on the last test, your enthusiasm certainly seems unbounded & we are again very much indebted to you for your cooperation Very sorry not to have forwarded you the memo I promised but I can assure you that I have not forgotten but have had great difficulty in getting everyone's signature since they are all in outlying suburbs. I will send it at the earliest possible opportunity. The stations during the last test were 3AM Sure 3BD Game 3BY Dial 3MC Moon 3JU Word 3BQ Beer and they were all very glad, of course, to hear of your reception. I have been searching the ether in the vicinity of 200 metres with 4 stages of RF & have found several of the 5's i.e. 5AH, AN, BQ, BG & had a long two way talk with 5AH. Last night Saturday I heard two stations from about 8.30 one on 240 & other on about 200. Phone & CW but unfortunately heard no calls - I copied pages of their stuff - which was the usual test stuff, the 240 metre chap having "altered my W.L. today & put insulators in my guys, don't suppose it will make any difference" I don't think they were 5's & also don't think there are any 2's on 200 so thought it may have been you. 2IX - 2LA and other 2's come in well here & can hear 2IX's music 20' from phones on 4 stage R.F. He uses 15 watts & transmits from 8pm every Tuesday & Friday on 407 metres (Burwood Radio Club) Every Wed, Sat & Sun I will transmit on 375 metres & one of the Adelaide chaps will follow on 200 - from 9pm - Calibration waves for Trans Pacific Test purposes. I am very anxious to hear from you re some transmission - on any power down to 1 milli-watt!! so please arrange some times & we will listen for you, as I said before any time will suit. Many thanks again for your report & I will send the memo as soon as poss. Yrs sincerely Ross A Hull pse excuse scribble MELBOURNE 10th. May. 1923. We, the undersigned, wish to register our appreciation of the hearty co-operation shown by you in giving your services at very short notice, for a long period of testing for eight nights during which you correctly logged seven Melbourne experimental transmitting stations not one of which employed more than eight watts of power, even though only a single receiving valve was employed at your station (7AA). Maxwell Howden 3BQ Hector Holst 3BY Ross A Hull 3JU Mr. T. Watkins, E H Cox 3BD 146 Warwick Street, H Kingsley Love 3BM HOBART also Mr S Newman 3MC Mr Dorhman 3AM