I think IHF members would be interested in the World Wide Award contest that is currently running all of January. HF operators on all modes may have already seen the special event stations with callsigns ending in ‘WWA’, for example CR2WWA in the Azores. The object of the ‘contest’ is to work these stations; you can work them once a day and in any mode (SSB, CW, FT8, FT4) etc. The stations are typically super-sized club operations and they’re eager to work anyone that calls. At the end of January you can download your own award certificate.
No blurb is complete without an AI Overview: The “World Wide Award” (WWA) in amateur radio is like collecting Easter eggs because both involve a treasure hunt for unique finds (radio contacts/locations vs. hidden eggs) across a wide area, driven by excitement, a desire to “collect” (countries/locations), and the thrill of discovery.
Another local historic radio pioneer… my wife’s grandfather, John Taylor, installed the first radio transmitter in Victoria on Gonzales Hill in 1907. J. D. Taylor had quite the life working for Marconi, based in England. He travelled across the Atlantic, up and down the Atlantic coast setting up marine radio stations from Newfoundland to Boston. He went to South Africa during the Boer War and then to Mexico and finally to Victoria. All of the Marconi Company records were donated to the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
The July 27, 1907 edition of the Daily Colonist reports: “John D Taylor has a contract for the building of the station on Shotbolt’s hill [Gonzales Hill] in this city.” $2,000 was paid for an acre of land on the Hill. Construction and installation of the station began almost immediately. Main equipment was a Fairbanks-Morse 3 horsepower gasoline engine, driving a 1,000 Watt alternating current generator. The transmitter was the Shoemaker type, with the open core transformer, tubular glass condensers, fixed spark gap with the inductance coil helix. A crystal detector radio receiver rounded out the installation. A 150-foot wooden mast supported the antenna. The single floor building consists of three rooms which hold the equipment and an operations area. Eddie Haugton is station manager. Call sign VSD.” Two years later the equipment was upgraded to 2 kilowatts, along with the note “It was found having the transmitters and engines in the same building as the operator’s residence just wasn’t to anyone’s benefit.”.
In July 1907 the Union Steamship “Camosun” was the first vessel on this coast to be fitted with Marconi wireless equipment in anticipation of the promised coast stations. The Marconi Company had a strict policy of not communicating with another station, either a ship or fixed, unless it too was fitted with their equipment.
JD Taylor left Marconi after WW1 and settled in Victoria. He worked as a radio inspector until he retired about 1945 as Superintendent of Radio in Victoria.
https://islandhf.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/IslandHF-logo-soaring-eagle-light-blue-back-300x118.png00Alan Guilbault VE7UBAhttps://islandhf.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/IslandHF-logo-soaring-eagle-light-blue-back-300x118.pngAlan Guilbault VE7UBA2025-12-13 14:41:492025-12-13 14:41:49The First Radio Transmitter in Victoria
There is some really interesting history behind this QSL card from 1933. Fred Green, VE5CH, was a 20 year-old ham living with his family at 347 Foul Bay Road, a Samuel Maclure mansion. VE9AW was the experimental call sign for a Fokker Super Universal aircraft, CF-AAM, which was built in 1928 and purchased new by the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company (Cominco) to support mineral exploration. To provide the high voltage for the radio’s transmitter it had a small wind turbine hung below one of the wings. The aircraft is now in the Royal Aviation Museum in Winnipeg. In the 1930s it was operated on floats, not wheels, as there were far more lakes then runways in the north.
The Cominco employee behind equipping the aircraft with a radio was an avid ham called Donald L. Hings, VE5BH. During WWII he was called to Ottawa to develop military radios, which included the first walkie-talkie (number 58 set), of which some 18,000 units were produced. https://ingeniumcanada.org/channel/innovation/donald-hings-engineering-walkie-talkie Much later, he received an Order of Canada award from the Governor General for this work. https://youtu.be/mFtUwtsJpgM I have his collection of QSL cards from the early 1930s.
Very interesting for me, he worked on the same floor of the National Research Council building that I later worked in as a radio astronomer. It’s located on the Ottawa River beside the Rideau Falls, a beautiful location!
