AWA Radio Station Callsigns

The 1927 issue of the AWA Radio Guide contained a wealth of collected radio information that was not available anywhere else back then.  AWA [Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd], was a mega-radio organization in Australia that was founded one hundred years ago and it welded together British, German, American and Australian radio companies, in the same way as RCA [Radio Corporation of America] welded together in the United States similar American and European radio companies.

Page 147 in that 1927 AWA Radio Guide contains a list of active shortwave radio stations in Australia, Australian waters and some Pacific areas, all of which had been established by AWA with their own technical equipment.  A study of those now almost one hundred year old callsigns opens up a vista of interesting radio information that has long since since been forgotten.

Just four of the maritime communication stations in the Coastal Radio Network in Australia are listed, as an example of the complete network of 26 stations that used up all of the available callsigns in the alphabetic series running from VLA through VLZ.

Those four listed stations were:-

VIS Sydney, VIM Melbourne, VIP Perth, and VIT Townsville.

A similar maritime coastal station at Rabaul on the island of New Britain (a province belonging to Papua New Guinea) operated under the callsign VJZ, a callsign that was part of a different alphabetic sequence.

Two dozen navy vessels are listed on that same radio page, all registered under His Majesty’s Australian Navy, though they operated under British, not Australian callsigns.  As an example, we list four of these ships:-

HMAS Adelaide – Cruiser GABC
HMAS Tasmania – Destroyer GACM
HMAS Mallow – Sloop GABP
HMAS Moresby – Survey Ship GMOJ    

Another callsign listing shows four communication stations, three of which were established in outback areas of Australia, and another at an oil surveying concession on the island of New Guinea.  Those four stations, now long ago and forgotten, were:-

Wave Hill, Northern Territory – Station VJD
Camooweal, Queensland – Station VJJ
Brunette Downs, Northern Territory – Station VZGO
Popo, New Guinea – Station VJO

More about these interesting outback radio communication stations in a coming edition of Wavescan, under the title, The World’s Largest Territory Owned by One Man.

The complete 1927 AWA Radio Guide is available as a PDF download from the WorldRadioHistory.com website:

https://worldradiohistory.com/Australian_Annuals_and_Publications.htm

Or you can browse it right here: