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 cassette recorders, and the latest revolutionary home recording system invented by Japan DAT (Digital Audio Tape) provides high fidelity studio quality with no background noise; really a 'super' version of the mini cassette recorder.
In Athens we continued to operate even through the Dictatorship 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 basement 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.