"When he completed his receiver I became very interested and decided I would build one too. But materials were hard to find and very expensive. Two items one had to buy: valves and headphones.
"I asked my friend where he had found the sheet metal to make the plates of the capacitor. He took me to a row of small shops which had a metal-faced ledge below the shop window. The metal was thin and seemed easy enough to remove. We sat on the ledge for a while and when the coast was clear we tore away a section and ran like mad. Later I ruined a pair of my mother's dressmaking scissors cutting out the plates. I used rings of some thick copper wire to space the plates but I could not drill holes in the plates for the spindle so a friend did that for me. I used about 15 plates and to this day I have no idea what the capacity of the finished capacitor was. Some small items for the receiver could be found in a little shop owned by an old man who charged exorbitant prices, so I decided I must go to Moscow for the valve and a single headphone that I needed.
"But Moscow was three days and two nights away by train, and it was the middle of winter. So what, you may ask. Like many others I had to travel on the roof of a goods waggon. I took with me a loaf of bread, a piece of cheese and two hard-boiled eggs. My father said I must be mad but he gave me some spending money and his blessing.
"I had eaten my food by the end of the second day so when we stopped at Brensk which is famous for its 'piroushki' I decided to try them. They were kept warm in large metal tins ready for the arrival of the train. There were seven varieties and I had one made with liver and a savoury sauce.
"When I arrived in Moscow I went to see the Greek ambassador as I was carrying a letter of introduction from my father who was acting Consul for Greece in Odessa, but it was Saturday and the ambassador's office was closed. I learned later that only foreign establishments closed at the week-end. So I went to look for a cheap hotel. Looking out of the bedroom window I saw a lot of people running in one direction. At that moment a woman brought me a towel and a small bar of soap, so I asked her what was going on outside. She said the butcher near the hotel had just received some liver. Would she buy me some I said. I gave her some money and she returned nearly two hours later with the liver wrapped in newspaper. When I opened it I saw it was horse liver cooked with corn and it had an awful sour smell. I just could not face it, although I was starving by now."
I asked Takis about the shops in Moscow. He said he had found several shops with parts and some made-up receivers in the State owned shops. He learned later that these receivers were made by amateurs because the factories only made equipment for the armed forces. He bought a triode valve called 'MICRO' and was told it had an amplification factor of 7. He wrapped it carefully in cotton wool for the return journey to Odessa. He also bought a dry battery pack which gave 80 volts, and an enormous single headphone for one ear which was ex-army surplus.
When he returned home and began to build his receiver he raided his mother's kitchen to build things like terminals, switches etc. There was an electric bell circuit between the dining room and the kitchen and as they didn't use it his mother said he could dismantle it and use the wire, which was quite long because it went up into the loft and then down again to the kitchen.
"I had acquired a small square of bakelite and I used a penknife to make a holder for the valve, twisting a few turns of wire round the pins as I could find nothing to use as a socket. I had no idea how to connect the various items I made or bought. I had seen a circuit diagram in a French magazine of a detector with reaction. I made the connections by twisting wires together and finally the receiver was complete. The next thing was the aerial. I made an enormous aerial with four parallel wires, like the aerials I had seen on ships. Putting it up was a dangerous operation as our house had a rather steep tiled roof, so I got some friends to help me. Some of them who had 'superior knowledge' told me the down-lead must have no bends. I got hold of a stiff copper wire and supported the down-lead on two enormous bell insulators as used on telegraph poles. I had to smash a corner of my bedroom window to bring the wire in. I had bought a large knife switch which could be turned over to connect the aerial to ground. I was afraid the large flat top of the aerial would attract thunderbolts. When I finally connected the aerial to the receiver I heard ABSOLUTELY NOTHING."
I asked him how he tuned the receiver. He said he had put many taps on the coil and he twisted his antenna to these taps trying various combinations with the tuning capacitor.
"All I heard was this breathing noise. I learned later that it was the 'carrier wave' of a broadcasting station without modulation, but I didn't know what that meant. As my friends also heard the same noise I was convinced my receiver was working. We soon found out that the long wave transmitter at Ankara, the capital of Turkey was making test transmissions without modulation. Ankara was one of the first broadcasting stations in that part of the world."