October 29, 2004

The Wireless Institute of Australia (WIA) notes that the first direct
two-way radio communication between Australia and the US occurred 80 years
ago on November 3, 1924.

Walter Francis Maxwell "Max" Howden, A3BQ (later VK3BQ), contacted William
L. Williams, U6AHP, of Pomona, California, using Morse code. (A 1924 US
Department of Commerce call book indicates Williams could run up to 300 W.)
The contact took place in the vicinity of the current 80-meter band.

Located near Melbourne, A3BQ ran 130 W using a single-tube transmitter.
His antenna consisted of six wires, 65 feet long and 80 feet in the air.
"The first transpacific QSO was a very significant achievement at a time
when radio amateurs were seeking to prove that long-distance communication
was possible on short wavelengths that governments had considered to be
useless," said the WIA's Jim Linton, VK3PC. Nine days later, Howden achieved
the first Australia-to-Great Britain two-way wireless telegraphy contact by
working E. J. Simmonds, G2OD, in Buckingham, England.

The following February, A3BQ again worked G2OD for the first two-way Amateur
Radio phone contact between Australia and the UK--another world first. "The
efforts of the late Max Howden, VK3BQ, and many other pioneering radio
amateurs of that era, both the southern and northern hemispheres,
significantly added to the knowledge of communications." Linton remarked.
"It led to the rapid development of radio in terms of inter-continental and
global communications and opened up the short waves for broadcasting,
international wireless telegraph and many other uses over long distances."

A January 1925 QST article reporting various successful contacts with
Australia and elsewhere proclaimed, "the day of true international Amateur
Radio is here."

It also noted that A3BQ had sent greetings to ARRL via U1SF in Connecticut.

http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2004/10/29/6/?nc=1