The Dawn of Amateur Radio in the U.K. and Greece Part 6

Takis continued: "I would like you to notice these two QSL cards I received in 1933. I1IP wrote on his card 'I am on the air since 1924 but you are the first SV station I have heard'. And the British listener BRS1183 wrote 'Dear old man, very pleased to report your signals. Are you the only active station in SV?' I think those comments speak for themselves."

Norman: "Had you not heard about Tavaniotis, who had also emigrated from Russia?"

Takis: "No. It was you who took me to the bas.e.m.e.nt shack and introduced me. I remember how I gaped when I saw the 150 watt transmitter Bill had built."

Takis then described how he had heard a distress signal on his home-made receiver. It was in a language he could not understand so he called his father, who was quite a linguist, to listen. It appeared that the vessel had caught fire as it was approaching the port of Piraeus, south of Athens. The captain of the s.h.i.+p said their predicament was complicated by the fact that they were transporting a large circus, with many wild animals. Takis ran to the nearest Police station and told his story, but was greeted practically with derision.

How could a young lad like him know there had been a fire on a s.h.i.+p which was not even in sight of the sh.o.r.e? Anyway, somebody was brought to the station and the officer said "Go with this man." Takis was taken to the coast at Palaio Faliro where he boarded a salvage tug, and they set out to sea. He said the vessel in distress had been bound for Piraeus, and sure enough the salvage tug located it, but when they approached it there was no sign of fire as it had been put out, before any of the animals could be harmed. But the engine room had been damaged, so the tug towed the vessel into harbour. What Coumbias didn't know was that by law he was ent.i.tled to a proportion of the salvage money, and he never got anything.

Another incident involving a small yacht which belonged to a friend of Takis' led to an interesting a.s.signment. The yacht was considered to be not seaworthy any more, and a W/T transmitter it carried was dismantled completely by an electrician who knew nothing about wireless.

"I was asked to put it together again by the owner who wanted to sell it to the s.h.i.+p to sh.o.r.e W/T station where they did not have a short wave capability yet. When I was shown the parts I was horrified to see that there was no circuit diagram or instructions of any sort.

It took me more than a month to figure it all out. The transmitter was of French manufacture and consisted of two enormous triodes in a Hartley oscillator circuit. When I got it to work it was installed at the Naval Wireless station at Votanikos, where the Director, Captain Kyriakos Pezopoulos used it for experimental transmissions. There were already two other transmitters there, one on Long Waves and one on 600 metres. The callsign of the station was SXA. As this was the third transmitter they used the callsign SXA3. The operator, Lt. George Ba.s.siacos, had discovered some telegraphy stations which replied when he called them--he had accidentally stumbled upon the amateur 20 metre band! With a transmitter supplied with unrectified A.C. at 400 Hz. and a power output of several kilowatts, no wonder contacts with any part of the world were easy. When Captain Pezopoulos met Bill Tavaniotis the latter suggested that if the 'experimental'

transmissions were to continue in the amateurs bands, the callsign should be altered to SX3A. Thousands of successful contacts were made as it was the beginning of sunspot cycle 16, a very good one as old timers will know. If anyone reading this has a QSL card from SX3A it would be appreciated if he would donate it to the Technical Museum in Greece."

(Takis Coumbias died suddenly of a heart attack in September 1987.)

2. Pol Psomiadis N2DOE (formerly SV1AZ).

The text which follows was written by Pol N2DOE of Bergenfield NJ.

Norman Joly and I first met in 1935 when I started working with Bill SV1KE as his radio mechanic. Norman was then working for the local agents of RCA selling broadcast receivers. The last time I saw him before the war, was in September 1939. I was still working with Bill and I went to the British School of Archaeology in Athens to deliver a National NC 100 with a Spiderweb all-band antenna. Norman had been recruited to set up a monitoring station for the Press Department of the British Emba.s.sy, which had been moved to a building in the grounds of the school. After the end of the war I saw him again in 1948 in the uniform of a Superintendent of Police working in the British Police Mission to Greece. He told me he had obtained a special licence and was back on the air with his pre-war callsign SV1RX.

In 1951 I emigrated to Brazil where I stayed for 17 years and then came to the U.S.A. in 1968, where I have been ever since. We had lost contact with each other and it was five years later that I found Norman's address in the American callbook. I wrote to him and in his reply he begged me to come on the air again. Owing to a prolonged family illness which culminated in the loss of my beloved wife it was 1980 before I was in the mood to take up amateur radio once again, with my present callsign N2DOE.

When I went to London in 1984 to spend a few weeks with Norman he told me he had started recording some reminiscences on a tape recorder about the first radio amateurs in Greece, and he asked me if I would like to help. As I was one of them myself I agreed. When I left to return to the U.S.A. he gave me a number of ca.s.settes to transcribe.

Although he speaks fluent Greek without any accent at all, he never attended a Greek school and couldn't write the memories. He told me to add anything else I could remember about those pioneering days long gone by.

So, to start from the beginning, let me say that I was born in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in Turkey, in October 1910, of Greek parents. Although we spoke Greek at home I did not go to a Greek school until I was nine. But I soon moved to the French College where all the lessons were in French and Greek was only taught as a foreign language for two hours every afternoon.

My elder brother had subscribed to a French magazine called 'La Science et La Vie' (Science & Life) and I had become fascinated by a subject called 'Telegrafie sans fil' (Telegraphy without wire). The broadcasting of speech and music had not started yet in that part of the world, though in 1923, a broadcasting station was built in Ankara the capital of Turkey. Broadcast receivers began to appear in the shops, either with headphones or large horn loudspeakers, but we never had one at home.

In 1926 we moved to Athens, Greece, where I went to school.

Strangely enough, as I found out later, that was the year when Norman also came to Athens for the first time. At school I met Nasos Coucoulis (later SV1SM and SV1AC) who was also very interested in wireless. I made a crystal receiver and was able to hear the Greek Royal Navy station at Votanikos SXA and the old station at Thiseon in Athens itself, which was still a spark station. There just was nothing else to hear. I acquired a Philips 'E' type valve and built a grid-leak detector circuit, but all I got was silence. The four volt heater drew one amp and I had been trying to get it going with a small torch battery. As I became more experienced I began repairing simple broadcast receivers for my friends and putting up wire antennas for reception for people who had bought broadcast receivers.

In 1929 Nasos and I were in our final year at the Megareos School.

We built a very simple AM transmitter tuned to about 500 metres and we broadcast the performance of a play acted by the final year students.

I have no idea if anybody heard our transmission, but it was certainly the first amateur broadcast in Greece.

Nasos and I spoke to each other with very simple AM transmitters across the 60 metres or so separating our homes, again without knowing whether anybody else ever accidentally tuned in to our very low power transmissions.

In 1932 I was called up for my compulsory Military service and ended up attending the Reserve Officers Cadet School. After my military training I started work at the Lambropoulos Brothers shop in the Metohikon Tameion building. It was there that I made the acquaintance of Takis Coumbias, who had come to Greece from Russia with his family. Takis had had eight years experience of amateur radio in Russia, and he told us how the radio clubs operated under the strict supervision of the Communist Party.

Three years later, in 1935, I moved to Tavaniotis' workshop as his mechanic. 'Bill' had built an AM and CW transmitter with an output of 150 watts. He used the callsign SV1KE. We had regular contacts with George Moens SU1RO in Cairo, Egypt. George is still active in his native land of Belgium with the callsign ON5RO in Brussels. He should be well into his 80s by now. In 1938 George came to Athens with his wife Beba and their little boy Robert to visit her parents who were Greek, and of course they came to our shack and we had the pleasure of meeting them in person after many years of chatting over the air.

In Greece we are 7 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time and so our contacts with the U.S.A. took place well after midnight, our time.

One of the stations we contacted very regularly was Charles Mellen W1FH in Boston. Chas was born in Boston of Greek parents. His father came to Greece in 1936 or 1937 with Charles' younger sister, a pretty little girl of about 14. They came to Bill's shack and were able to speak to Boston with the equipment shown in this photograph taken by Norman. After the end of World War II W1FH together with W6AM of California were the two leading stations in the U.S.A. topping all the achievement tables. But W6AM had a slight advantage; he had bought a site previously belonging to Press Wireless which had 36 rhombics whereas W1FH always operated with his simple Yagi at 60 feet.

Another station with which we had frequent contacts on 20 metres was W2IXY owned by Dorothy Hall. One night Dorothy gave us a big surprise. In the course of a QSO she told us to listen carefully.

Suddenly the three or four of us in SV1KE's shack heard our voices coming back from New York. Dorothy had recorded our previous transmission on a disc. A few days later we turned the tables on her.

We had hastily put together some recording equipment and played back her transmission. Dorothy said that was the first time she had heard her voice coming from 5,000 miles away. I must explain that at that time (about 1933) home recording was a novelty even in the U.S.A.

Recording on vinyl tape was invented by Telefunken towards the end of the war in 1945. Today even little children play with ca.s.sette recorders, and the latest revolutionary home recording system invented by j.a.pan DAT (Digital Audio Tape) provides high fidelity studio quality with no background noise; really a 'super' version of the mini ca.s.sette recorder.

In Athens we continued to operate even through the Dictators.h.i.+p of General Metaxas which began with a coup in August 1936, but not without some problems. The main target of the infamous Maniadakis, Minister of the Interior under Metaxas, were of course the Communists, but the handful of radio amateurs also came under suspicion of being subversive elements. Things got worse, in fact, when the newspaper ESTIA owned by K. Kyrou, published an article blaming 'amateurs' for being responsible for interference to short wave reception. I must explain that the writer was referring to the dozens of pirate low power broadcasting stations operating in the medium wave (broadcast) band. Regretably, I have to place on record that owing to the late development of broadcasting and official recognition of amateur radio in Greece, the word 'amateur' in the minds of the general public embraces CBers, pirates of all kinds operating on medium waves and recently in the FM band, and genuine licensed amateurs as well. So, as I was working in the bas.e.m.e.nt workshop at SV1KE's one afternoon, three of Maniadakis' plain-clothes men turned up and said they had come to seize 'the broadcasting equipment'. Fortunately Bill was not in the shop when they came. I asked them if they had a search warrant and they said no. I replied that I was only an employee and could they call back a little later when Mr Tavaniotis himself would be there to answer their questions, and thus managed to get rid of them.

When Bill returned I told him about the incident and he left straight away and went to the Ministry of Posts & Telegraphs to see Mr.

Stefanos Eleftheriou. And so it came about that Eleftheriou who knew all about our activity in the amateur bands issued the first three licences to SV1KE, SV1CA and SV1NK 'to carry out experimental transmissions relating to the study of propagation on the short waves'. He knew that he had every right to do this as Greece was a signatory to the international telecommunication treaties.

I would like to record at this point that Aghis Cazazis SV1CA now a silent key, has left his own 'monument' in Athens. After the end of World War II, in his capacity as Head of Lighting Development with the Electricity authority, he designed the magnificent floodlighting of the Acropolis which is admired by tourists to the present day.

To return to 1937: Mr Eleftheriou entrusted us with the task of preparing draft legislation for legalising amateur radio activity. We wrote to the U.S.A., to England, France and Germany and obtained copies of the laws governing the issue of licences in all these countries, and we began the long task of drafting a text which would be appropriate to the political situation then prevailing in our country (military dictators.h.i.+p). Norman Joly, then SV1RX, had written a text in English, but before we could translate it into Greek or do anything about it, all our hopes were dashed to the ground by the outbreak of war in September 1939.

In 1944 while serving as a reserve officer in the Greek army, I was seconded to the British Military Mission to Greece (B.M.M.) because of my knowledge of English and French. There I met several amateurs serving with the British forces, and one of them gave me a small military transmitter, so I was able to come on the air again with my old callsign of SV1AZ.

3. Constantine 'Bill' Tavaniotis (formerly SV1KE).

There is no doubt that the most active and best known amateur in Greece before World War II was 'Bill' SV1KE. He was active on 20 and 10 metres on AM phone and CW, using his famous McElroy 'bug' to good advantage. (No electronic keyers and no 15 metre band in those years).

Tavaniotis was born in Rostov, USSR, of Greek parents. His father was a well-known doctor. Like many other Greek families Bill and his parents left Russia in the early years of the Communist regime and moved to Istanbul, Turkey, where he began his studies at the famous Robert College. Later he went to London where he first came into contact with radio amateurs, while studying Electrical Engineering.

After that he went to Belgium.

Bill had a knack of picking up languages and when I met him in Athens in the early thirties he spoke at least seven to my knowledge: Russian, Greek, English, French, Italian, Turkish and German. His p.r.o.nunciation in all them was excellent. On one occasion at a party in the Athens suburb of Palaio Psyhico one of the guests was an amateur from Italy who spoke no English, so Bill interpreted from that language into Italian for his benefit. He then translated what the Italian had said into English for the others. But suddenly their faces went blank. Quite unconsciously Bill had translated the Italian's remarks into Turkis.h.!.+ Many years later Bill was employed at the United Nations in New York as a simultaneous translator. In October 1946 Bill and his wife Artemis visited Charles Mellen W1FH in Boston for an 'eyeball' after more than ten years of QSOs over the air, with the exception of the war years of course. Chas photographed Bill outside the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology and Bill photographed Mary (Chas' xyl), Chas and Artemis standing in front of the W1FH tower.

The first transmitter he built can be seen in the photo taken from the book GREEK BROADCASTING published by Radio Karayianni in 1952.

His shack was in the bas.e.m.e.nt workshop at 17a, Bucharest Street in Athens, an address which became known world-wide as the first QSL bureau for Greece.

The gang of enthusiasts who met at Bill's included Nasos Coucoulis SV1SM, Aghis Cazazis SV1CA, Nick Katselis SV1NK, Mikes Paidousi SV1MP, Pol Psomiadis SV1AZ (now N2DOE) and the writer of these memoirs, SV1RX. Of course all visiting amateurs made a beeline for the shack in the bas.e.m.e.nt. As most of our contacts were with the U.S.A. we were usually up most of the night because of the 7-hour difference with Eastern Standard Time. None of us had motor-cars and public transport was not available during the night hours so we all got plenty of exercise walking back to our respective houses.

Bill was closely in touch with two men who played a very important role in the development of amateur radio in Greece. I am referring to Stefanos Eleftheriou who was Section Head for Telecommunications at the Ministry (Greek initials T.T.T.)., and to Captain Kyriakos Pezopoulos, Director of D.R.Y.N. (Greek initials for Directorate of the Wireless Service of the Navy). The long wave spark transmitter at Votanikos, a suburb of Athens, (callsign SXA) had been built by the Marconi company before World

(Bill Tavaniotis died of cancer in 1948.)

4. Harry Barnett G2AIQ (formerly SV1WE).

In July 1946, Harry Barnett, a Royal Air Force officer attached to the Press Department of the British Emba.s.sy in Athens obtained an experimental transmitting licence from the W/T section of the Ministry of Posts & Telegraphs, with the callsign SV1WE. At that time he was living in a flat in Athens and could not put up an antenna, so it was not until June 1947 that he became active.

The terms of his licence were in themselves rather strange, one might even say quite 'experimental', the final paragraph reading:

"This experimental research must be carried out as follows:-

1. With a maximum power of 50 watts.

2. In the frequency bands (harmonics) 130, 260, 520 Mc/s.

3. In the frequency bands 28 Mc/s and 56 Mc/s.

4. With the call sign SV1WE."

From June 1947 until April 1948 Harry worked 61 countries, mostly on phone in the 10 & 20 metre bands, at a time when there were not many stations on the air--a minute fraction of the millions now active.

He used a National HRO receiver he had got off a sc.r.a.p heap which he modified to take the efficient EF50 valves in the R.F. stages and EF39s in the I.F.

The transmitter was completely 'home brew', consisting of a metal 6L6 Franklin oscillator on 3.5 MHz followed by two more 6L6s doubling to 14 MHz. In the final amplifier stage Harry used a Telefunken pentode, the famous and very efficient RL12P35 which was used in the German tank transmitters in all stages, oscillator, P.A. and audio amplifier/suppressor grid modulator. He adopted the same method of modulation using a record player amplifier and an Astatic crystal microphone.