Early Australian amateur radio callsigns
Ever wondered how the Australian amateur radio prefix VK came about?
According to "History of Australian Radio Callsigns" by K3HZ, Dave, it came
from a block of prefixes beginning with the letter V, assigned to
British Commonwealth countries in 1912 to commemorate the death of
Queen Victoria.
The block VH - VK was allocated to Australia but these were not assigned to
Australian amateurs until 1928.
1910, after representations by the WIA, the then Postmaster General's Department
began issuing experimental licenses. These used a three letter call beginning
with X and did not differentiate between states until 1912 when these three
letter calls were broken up into blocks according to state.
In early 1914 the experimental calls were changed again when a number
representing the states was incorporated into a 1 x 2 format. The Letter X
was followed by a number, for example 4 to represent Qld followed by a two
letter suffix.
All licences were cancelled during WW1 and none were issued until 1922 when an
A was added to the X prefix to designate "Experimental Australia" resulting in
a 2 x two callsign format.
The next change in Prefix came in 1927 when an international radio conference
decided that Australia should use the prefix OA to signify "Oceania Australia".
The OA prefix was short lived however as yet another international radio
conference in 1928 resulted in Australia amateurs finally using the VK prefix.
So if today's callsign format seems confusing spare a thought for our early
amateur brethren and the many changes that they endured in only 18 short
but tumultuous years.
Col VK4CC
WIA |
