3484 lines
186 KiB
Plaintext
3484 lines
186 KiB
Plaintext
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The dawn of amateur radio in the U.K. and Greece : a personal view
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Norman F. Joly.
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London : Joly, 1990. - 151p. - 0-9515628-0-0
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C O N T E N T S
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0. PROLOGUE.............................
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1. THE DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRICITY.......
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2. THE BIRTH OF RADIO COMMUNICATIONS....
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3. WHAT IS A RADIO AMATEUR?.............
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4. THE 1921 AMATEUR TRANSATLANTIC TESTS.
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5. THE FIRST GREEK RADIO AMATEURS.......
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6. WORLD WAR II AND AFTER IN GREECE.....
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7. PIONEERS IN GREECE...................
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8. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES & ANECDOTES...
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9. MISCELLANY...........................
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10. GLOSSARY FOR NON-TECHNICAL READERS...
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Prologue
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Thales of Miletus.
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Thales, who was born in 640 B.C., was a man of exceptional wisdom
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and one of the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece. He was the father of
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Greek, and consequently of European philosophy and science. His
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speculations embraced a wide range of subjects relating to political
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as well as to celestial matters. One must remember that even up to
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the 18th century there was no clear distinction between philosophy and
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science, both being products of the human mind in its attempts to
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explain reality.
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Thales had studied astronomy in Egypt so he was able to draw up
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accurate tables forecasting when the River Nile would be in flood.
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But he first became widely known by anticipating an eclipse of the sun
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for May 585 B.C., which happened to coincide with the final battle of
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the war between the Lydians and the Persians. He had used some tables
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drawn up by Babylonian astronomers, but he did not succeed in
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forecasting the exact day (May 28th) or the hour of the spectacular
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event.
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It can well be said that Thales was the first man ever recorded to
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have cornered the market in a commodity: having foreseen a three-year
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drought he bought up large quantities of olive oil and stored it for
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sale at a later date.
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But who could possibly have imagined that one of Thales' original
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speculations would affect the Radio Amateurs of the 20th Century? He
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believed that certain inanimate substances, like lodestones (magnetic
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rocks) and the resin amber, possessed psyche (a soul).
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Many centuries had to elapse before this soul was identified as
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static electricity and magnetism and harnessed for the generation of
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mains electricity which dramatically altered the pattern of life on
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our planet - and also led to the creation of our hobby of Amateur
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Radio.
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About 400 years ago an English scientist called William Gilbert
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(1544-1603), who had read about the unexplained observation of Thales,
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also became interested in the intangible property and decided to call
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it electricity, from the classical Greek word for amber, which is
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electron.
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CHAPTER ONE
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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRICITY
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The phenomenon which Thales had observed and recorded five
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centuries before the birth of Christ aroused the interest of many
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scientists through the ages. They made various practical experiments
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in their efforts to identify the elusive force which Thales had
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likened to a 'soul' and which we now know to have been static
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electricity.
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Of all forms of energy, electricity is the most baffling and
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difficult to describe. An electric current cannot be seen. In fact
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it does not exist outside the wires and other conductors which carry
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it. A live wire carrying a current looks exactly the same and weighs
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exactly the same as it does when it is not carrying a current. An
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electric current is simply a movement or flow of electrons.
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Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman and scientist born in
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Boston in 1706, investigated the nature of thunder and lightning by
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flying a child's kite during a thunderstorm. He had attached a metal
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spike to the kite, and at the other end of the string to which the
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kite was tied he secured a key. As the rain soaked into the string,
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electricity flowed freely down the string and Franklin was able to
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draw large sparks from the key. Of course this could have been very
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dangerous, but he had foreseen it and had supported the string through
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an insulator. He observed that this electricity had the same
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properties as the static electricity produced by friction.
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But long before Franklin many other scientists had carried out
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research into the nature of electricity.
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In England William Gilbert (1544-1603) had noticed that the powers
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of attraction and repulsion of two non-metallic rods which
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he had rubbed briskly were similar to those of lodestone and amber -
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they had acquired the curious quality we call magnetism. Remembering
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Thales of old he coined the word 'electricity'.
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Otto von Guericke (1602-1686) a Mayor of Magdeburg in Germany, was
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an amateur scientist who had constructed all manner of gadgets. One
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of them was a machine consisting of two glass discs revolving in
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opposite directions which produced high voltage charges through
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friction. Ramsden and Wimshurst built improved versions of the
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machine.
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A significant breakthrough occurred when Alessandro Volta
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(1745-1827) in Italy constructed a simple electric cell (in 1799)
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which produced a flow of electrons by chemical means. Two plates, one
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of copper and the other of zinc, were placed in an acid solution and a
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current flowed through an external wire connecting the two plates.
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Later he connected cells in series (voltaic pile) which consisted of
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alternate layers of zinc and copper discs separated by flannel discs
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soaked in brine or acid which produced a higher electric pressure
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(voltage). But Volta never found the right explanation of why his cell
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was working. He thought the flow of electric current was due to the
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contact between the two metals, whereas in fact it results from the
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chemical action of the electrolyte on the zinc plate. However, his
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discovery proved to be of incalculable value in research, as it
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enabled scientists to carry out experiments which led to the
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discoveries of the heating, lighting, chemical and magnetic effects of
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electricity.
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One of the many scientists and physicists who took advantage of
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the 'current electricity' made possible by Volta's cells was Hans
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Christian Oersted (1777-1851) of Denmark. Like many others he was
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looking for a connection between the age-old study of magnetism and
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electricity, but now he was able to pass electric currents through
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wires and place magnets in various positions near the wires. His
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epoch-making discovery which established for the first time the
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relationship between magnetism and electricity was in fact an
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accident.
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While lecturing to students he showed them that the current
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flowing in a wire held over a magnetic compass needle and at right
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angles to it (that is east-west) had no effect on the needle. Oersted
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suggested to his assistant that he might try holding the wire parallel
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to the length of the needle (north-south) and hey presto, the needle
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was deflected! He had stumbled upon the electromagnetic effect in the
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first recorded instance of a wire behaving like a magnet when a
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current is passed through it.
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A development of Oersted's demonstration with the compass needle
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was used to construct the world's first system of signaling by the
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use of electricity.
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In 1837 Charles Wheatstone and William Cooke took out a patent for
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the world's first Five-needle Telegraph, which was installed between
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Paddington railway station in west London and West Drayton station a
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few miles away. The five copper wires required for this system were
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embedded in blocks of wood.
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Electrolysis, the chemical decomposition of a substance into its
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constituent elements by the action of an electric current, was
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discovered by the English chemists Carlisle and William Nicholson
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(1753-1815). If an electric current is passed through water it is
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broken down into the two elements of which it is composed -- hydrogen
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and oxygen. The process is used extensively in modern industry for
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electroplating. Michael Faraday (1791-1867) who was employed as a
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chemist at the Royal Institution, was responsible for introducing many
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of the technical terms connected with electrolysis, like electrolyte
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for the liquid through which the electric current is passed, and anode
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and cathode for the positive and negative electrodes respectively. He
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also established the laws of the process itself. But most people
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remember his name in connection with his practical demonstration of
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electromagnetic induction.
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In France Andre-Marie Ampere (1775-1836) carried out a complete
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mathematical study of the laws which govern the interaction between
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wires carrying electric currents.
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In Germany in 1826 a Bavarian schoolmaster Georg Ohm (1789-1854)
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had defined the relationship between electric pressure (voltage),
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current (flow rate) and resistance in a circuit (Ohm's law) but 16
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years had to elapse before he received recognition for his work.
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Scientists were now convinced that since the flow of an electric
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current in a wire or a coil of wire caused it to acquire magnetic
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properties, the opposite might also prove to be true: a magnet could
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possibly be used to generate a flow of electricity.
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Michael Faraday had worked on this problem for ten years when
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finally, in 1830, he gave his famous lecture in which he demonstrated,
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for the first time in history, the principle of electromagnetic
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induction. He had constructed powerful electromagnets consisting of
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coils of wire. When he caused the magnetic lines of force surrounding
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one coil to rise and fall by interrupting or varying the flow of
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current, a similar current was induced in a neighbouring coil closely
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coupled to the first.
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The colossal importance of Faraday's discovery was that it paved
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the way for the generation of electricity by mechanical means.
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However, as can be seen from the drawing, the basic generator produces
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an alternating flow of current.(A.C.)
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Rotating a coil of wire steadily through a complete revolution in
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the steady magnetic field between the north and south poles of a
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magnet results in an electromotive force (E.M.F.) at its terminals
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which rises in value, falls back to zero, reverses in a negative
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direction, reaches a peak and again returns to zero. This completes
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one cycle or sine wave. (1Hz in S.I.units).
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In recent years other methods have been developed for generating
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electrical power in relatively small quantities for special
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applications. Semiconductors, which combine heat insulation with good
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electrical conduction, are used for thermoelectric generators to power
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isolated weather stations, artificial satellites, undersea cables and
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marker buoys. Specially developed diode valves are used as thermionic
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generators with an efficiency, at present, of only 20% but the heat
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taken away from the anode is used to raise steam for conventional
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power generation.
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Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) one of Britain's leading chemists of
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the 18th century, is best remembered for his safety lamp for miners
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which cut down the risk of methane gas explosions in mines. It was
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Davy who first demonstrated that electricity could be used to produce
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light. He connected two carbon rods to a heavy duty storage battery.
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When he touched the tips of the rods together a very bright white
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light was produced. As he drew the rods apart, the arc light
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persisted until the tips had burnt away to the critical gap which
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extinguished the light. As a researcher and lecturer at the Royal
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Institution Davy worked closely with Michael Faraday who first joined
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the institution as his manservant and later became his secretary.
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Davy's crowning honour in the scientific world came in 1820, when he
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was elected President of the Royal Society.
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In the U.S.A. the prolific inventor Thomas Alva Edison
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(1847-1831) who had invented the incandescent carbon filament bulb,
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built a number of electricity generators in the vicinity of the
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Niagara Falls. These used the power of the falling water to drive
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hydraulic turbines which were coupled to the dynamos. These
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generators were fitted with a spinning switch or commutator (one of
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the neatest gadgets Edison ever invented) to make the current flow in
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unidirectional pulses (D.C.) In 1876 all electrical equipment was
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powered by direct current.
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Today mains electricity plays a vital part in our everyday lives
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and its applications are widespread and staggering in their immensity.
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But we must not forget that popular demand for this convenient form of
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power arose only about 100 years ago, mainly for illumination.
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Recent experiments in superconductivity, using ceramic instead
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metal conductors have given us an exciting glimpse into what might be
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achieved for improving efficiency in the distribution of electric
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power.
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Historians of the future may well characterise the 20th century as
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`the century of electricity & electronics'. But Edison's D.C.
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generators could not in themselves, have achieved the spectacular
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progress that has been made. All over the world we depend totally on
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a system of transmitting mains electricity over long distances which
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was originally created by an amazing inventor whose scientific
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discoveries changed, and are still changing, the whole world. His
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name was scarcely known to the general public, especially in Europe,
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where he was born.
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Who was this unknown pioneer? Some people reckon that it was this
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astonishing visionary who invented wireless, remote control, robotics
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and a form of X-ray photography using high frequency radio waves. A
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patent which he took out in the U.S.A. in 1890 ultimately led to the
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design of the humble ignition coil which energises billions and
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billions of spark plugs in all the motor cars of the world. His
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American patents fill a book two inches thick. His name was Nicola
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Tesla (1856-1943).
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Nicola Tesla was born in a small village in Croatia which at that
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time formed part of the great Austro-Hungarian Empire. Today it is a
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northern province of Yugoslavia, a state created after the 1914-1918
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war. Tesla studied at the Graz Technical University and later in
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Budapest. Early in his studies he had the idea that a way had to be
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found to run electric motors directly from A.C. generators. His
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professor in Graz had assured him categorically that this was not
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possible. But young Tesla was not convinced. When he went to
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Budapest he got a job in the Central Telegraph Office, and one evening
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in 1882, as he was sitting on a bench in the City Park he had an
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inspiration which ultimately led to the solution of the problem.
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Tesla remembered a poem by the German poet Goethe about the sun
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which supports life on the earth and when the day is over moves on to
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give life to the other side of the globe. He picked up a twig and
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began to scratch a drawing on the soil in front of him. He drew four
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coils arranged symmetrically round the circumference of a circle. In
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the centre he drew a rotor or armature. As each coil in turn was
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energised it attracted the rotor towards it and the rotary motion was
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established. When he constructed the first practical models he used
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eight, sixteen and even more coils. The simple drawing on the ground
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led to the design of the first induction motor driven directly by
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A.C.electricity.
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Tesla emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1884. During the first year he
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filed no less than 30 patents mostly in relation to the generation and
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distribution of A.C. mains electricity. He designed and built his
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`A.C. Polyphase System' which generated three-phase alternating current
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at 25 Hz. One particular unit delivered 422 amperes at 12,000 volts.
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The beauty of this system was that the voltage could be stepped down
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using transformers for local use, or stepped up to many thousands of
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volts for transmission over long distances through relatively thin
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conductors. Edison's generating stations were incapable of any such
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thing.
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Tesla signed a lucrative contract with the famous railway engineer
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George Westinghouse, the inventor of the Westinghouse Air Brake which
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is used by most railways all over the world to the present day. Their
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generating station was put into service in 1895 and was called the
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Niagara Falls Electricity Generating Company. It supplied power for
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the Westinghouse network of trains and also for an industrial complex
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in Buffalo, New York.
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After ten years Tesla began to experiment with high frequencies.
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The Tesla Coil which he had patented in 1890 was capable of raising
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voltages to unheard of levels such as 300,000 volts. Edison, who was
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still generating D.C., claimed A.C. was dangerous and to prove it
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contracted with the government to produce the first electric chair
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using A.C. for the execution of murderers condemned to death. When it
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was first used it was a ghastly flop. The condemned man moaned and
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groaned and foamed at the mouth. After four minutes of repeated
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application of the A.C.voltage smoke began to come out of his back.
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It was obvious that the victim had suffered a horribly drawn-out
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death.
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Tesla said he could prove that A.C. was not dangerous. He gave a
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demonstration of high voltage electricity flowing harmlessly over his
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body. But in reality, he cheated, because he had used a frequency of
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10,000 cycles (10 kHz) at extremely low current and because of the
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skin effect suffered no harm.
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One of Tesla's patents related to a system of lighting using glass
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tubes filled with fluorine (not neon) excited by H.F.voltages. His
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workshop was lit by this method. Several years before Wilhelm
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Roentgen demonstrated his system of X-rays Tesla had been taking
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photographs of the bones in his hand and his foot from up to 40 feet
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away using H.F.currents.
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More astonishing still is the fact that in 1893, two years before
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Marconi demonstrated his system of wireless signaling, Tesla had
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built a model boat in which he combined power to drive it with radio
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control and robotics. He put the small boat in a lake in Madison
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Square Gardens in New York. Standing on the shore with a control box,
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he invited onlookers to suggest movements. He was able to make the
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boat go forwards and backwards and round in circles. We all know how
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model cars and aircraft are controlled by radio today, but when Tesla
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did it a century ago the motor car had not been invented, and the only
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method by which man could cover long distances was on horseback!
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Many people believe that a modification of Tesla's `Magnifying
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Transmitter' was used by the Soviet Union when suddenly one day in
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October 1976 they produced an amazing noise which blotted out all
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radio transmissions between 6 and 20 MHz. (The Woodpecker) The
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B.B.C., the N.B.C. and most broadcasting and telecommunication
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organisations of the world complained to Moscow (the noise had
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persisted continuously for 10 hours on the first day), but all the
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Russians would say in reply was that they were carrying out an
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experiment. At first nobody seemed to know what they were doing
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because it was obviously not intended as another form of jamming of
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foreign broadcasts, an old Russian custom as we all know.
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It is believed that in the pursuit of his life's ambition to send
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power through the earth without the use of wires, Tesla had achieved a
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small measure of success at E.L.F. (extremely low frequencies) of the
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order of 7 to 12 Hz. These frequencies are at present used by the
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military for communicating with submarines submerged in the oceans of
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the world.
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Tesla's career and private life have remained something of a
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mystery. He lived alone and shunned public life. He never read any
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of his papers before academic institutions, though he was friendly
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with some journalists who wrote sensational stories about him. They
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said he was terrified of microbes and that when he ate out at a
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restaurant he would ask for a number of clean napkins to wipe the
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cutlery and the glasses he drank out of. For the last 20 years of his
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life until he died during World War II in 1943 he lived the life of a
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semi-recluse, with a pigeon as his only companion. A disastrous fire
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had destroyed his workshops and many of his experimental models and
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all his papers were lost for ever.
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Tesla had moved to Colorado Springs where he built his largest
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ever coil which was 52 feet in diameter. He studied all the different
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forms of lightning in his unsuccessful quest for the transmission of
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power without wires.
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In Yugoslavia, Tesla is a national hero and a well-equipped museum
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in Belgrade contains abundant proof of the genius of this
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extraordinary man.
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CHAPTER TWO
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THE BIRTH OF RADIO COMMUNICATIONS
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By 1850 most of the basic electrical phenomena had been
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investigated. However, James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), Professor of
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Experimental Physics at Cambridge then came up with something entirely
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new. By some elegant mathematics he had shown the probable existence
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of electromagnetic waves of radiation. But it was twenty four years
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later (eight years after Maxwell's death) that Heinrich Hertz
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(1857-1894) in Germany gave a practical demonstration of the accuracy
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of this theory. He generated and detected electromagnetic waves
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across the length of his laboratory on a wavelength of approximately
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one metre. His own photograph of the equipment he had set up can be
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seen in the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
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To detect the electromagnetic waves Hertz employed a simple form
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of oscillator, which he termed a resonator. But it was not sensitive
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enough to detect waves at any great distance. Before wireless
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telegraphy could become practicable, a more delicate detector was
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necessary.
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Credit is due to Edouard Branly (1844-1940) of France for
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producing the first practical instrument for detecting Hertzian waves,
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the coherer. It consisted of two metal cylinders with leads attached,
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fitted tightly into the interior of a glass tube containing iron or
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steel filings. The instant an electric discharge of any sort occurred
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the coherer became conductive, and if it was tapped lightly its
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conducting property was immediately destroyed. In practice the
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tapping was done automatically by a tapper which came into action the
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moment the coherer became conductive.
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In Russia the physicist Aleksandr Popov (1859-1905) had used a
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coherer while engaged in the investigation of the effects of lightning
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discharges. He suggested that such discharges could possibly be used
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for signaling over long distances. Old timers may remember that
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about 50 years ago Russian amateurs used to send out a QSL card with a
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drawing of Popov and a caption which claimed that he was 'the inventor
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of radio'.
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In Italy, a young 22-year-old electrician became interested in
|
|
electromagnetic radiation after reading papers by Professor Augusto
|
|
Righi (1850-1921). It was Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937), the son of a
|
|
well-to-do landowner who lived in Bologna, and who was married to
|
|
Annie Jameson of the well known Irish Whiskey family. Guglielmo, their
|
|
second son, had his early education at a private school in Bedford,
|
|
England, and later at Livorno and Florence in Italy. When he read
|
|
about the experiments of Heinrich Hertz and about Popov's suggestion,
|
|
he saw the possibility of using these waves as a means of signaling.
|
|
His first transmitter, shown in the accompanying photograph, did not
|
|
radiate very far. When he folded the metal plate into a cylinder and
|
|
placed it on a pole 30 feet above the induction coil and connected to
|
|
it by a vertical wire, he was able to detect the radiation nearly two
|
|
kilometres away. Marconi realised that his signaling system would be
|
|
most useful to shipping, and in those days England possessed the
|
|
world's greatest navy and the world's biggest merchant fleet.
|
|
|
|
The Italian government was not interested in young Marconi's work,
|
|
so after a family conference he was brought to London by his mother,
|
|
who had influential relatives there. Not only did they finance his
|
|
early experiments but they also put him in touch with the right sort
|
|
of people. One of these was Alan A. Campbell Swinton who became the
|
|
first President of the Radio Society of London (now the R.S.G.B.) many
|
|
years later, in 1913. Campbell Swinton introduced the young Italian
|
|
to William Preece, then Engineer-in-Chief of the British Post Office.
|
|
Preece had already been investigating various methods of 'induction'
|
|
telegraphy.
|
|
|
|
In a book entitled Wireless Telegraphy published in 1908, William
|
|
J.White of the Engineer-in-Chief's department at the G.P.O. wrote,
|
|
|
|
"The work of Sir (then Mr) William Preece, important
|
|
though it was, did not attract the attention of the
|
|
public to the extent that might have been expected.
|
|
This was due to the fact that no sooner had he
|
|
demonstrated a method of wireless telegraphy which was
|
|
a commercial possibility than his system was superseded
|
|
by another, and a better one, brought to England by Mr
|
|
Guglielmo Marconi in 1896. The possibilities of Mr
|
|
Marconi's system were at once recognised by Mr William
|
|
Preece. The experience of the elder and the genius of
|
|
the younger man, who must be given the credit of having
|
|
devised the first practical system for wireless
|
|
telegraphy, combined to turn apparently disastrous
|
|
failures into success, and now (in 1908), wireless
|
|
telegraphy has become, in less than a decade, part and
|
|
parcel of commercial and national life."
|
|
|
|
The world's first patent for wireless telegraphy was awarded to
|
|
Marconi on the 2nd June 1896. In it he stated that "electrical action
|
|
can be transmitted through the earth, air or water, by means of
|
|
oscillations of high frequency." In the first public demonstration of
|
|
his equipment Marconi spanned the 365 metres between the G.P.O. and
|
|
Victoria street. Later, on Salisbury Plain, in March 1897, his
|
|
signals were detected over 7 kilometres away. On the 11th & 18th May
|
|
1897 messages were first exchanged over water. On the 27th of March
|
|
1899, during naval manoeuvres, Marconi bridged the English Channel for
|
|
the first time, a distance of about 140 kilometres. His transatlantic
|
|
triumph came on the 12th December 1901 when the morse letter 'S' was
|
|
transmitted from Poldhu, in Cornwall and received by Marconi himself
|
|
at St. John's, Newfoundland, who recorded the historic event in his
|
|
pocket book simply "Sigs at 12.20, 1.10 & 2.20".
|
|
|
|
The operation of Marconi's transmitter was itself quite
|
|
spectacular. To produce the oscillations he employed the oscillator
|
|
designed by Augusto Righi. Depressing the key closed the circuit and
|
|
brought the inductor coil into action. Vivid sparks occurred between
|
|
the balls of the oscillator, to the accompaniment of a succession of
|
|
sharp cracks, like the reports of a pistol, and some energy was sent
|
|
off the square metal plate in the form of trains of electromagnetic
|
|
waves, which radiated out in all directions. But the energy occupied
|
|
a very large bandwidth and the receivers of that period could not
|
|
separate two transmissions. William J.White of the Post Office wrote
|
|
in 1908, "The chief objection which has been raised against modern
|
|
wireless telegraphy is its want of secrecy. With a transmitter
|
|
sending out waves in all directions, it is possible for unscrupulous
|
|
persons to receive the messages and make an improper use of them.
|
|
This form of 'scientific hooliganism' has, in fact, become somewhat
|
|
notorious. When two or three transmitters are each sending out their
|
|
electromagnetic waves, the result, naturally, is utter confusion."
|
|
White added that the British Postal Administration was refusing to
|
|
grant licences for more than one system in the same area, in spite of
|
|
the fact that there had been some 'alleged' solutions of the problem.
|
|
The phenomenon of resonance was known and Dr (later Sir Oliver) Lodge
|
|
had taken out various patents between 1889 and 1898 in connection with
|
|
receivers. Marconi and his assistants ultimately solved the problem
|
|
by modifying Lodge's syntonic Leyden jar tuned circuit. They added a
|
|
tapped inductance in the aerial circuit of the transmitter and used
|
|
variable capacitors instead of fixed ones. This was probably the most
|
|
significant modification made in the development of wireless
|
|
telegraphy. (In Greek the word syntonismos 'to bring to equal tone'
|
|
is used for 'tuning'.)
|
|
|
|
Apart from the patents taken out by Sir Oliver Lodge and Dr
|
|
Alexander Muirhead, in 1897, patents were taken out in Germany by
|
|
Professor Braun of Strasbourg, who was joined by Professor Slaby and
|
|
Count D'Arco in 1903 to form the Telefunken company, and in the U.S.A.
|
|
by Dr Lee De Forest of the American De Forest Wireless Telegraph
|
|
Company who was the first to use a high A.C. voltage of 20,000 volts
|
|
to obtain the necessary high-potential discharges, thus dispensing
|
|
with the induction coil. Again in the U.S.A., Professor R.O.Fessenden
|
|
was responsible for the design of new types of transmitting and
|
|
receiving apparatus.
|
|
|
|
During this period Marconi had resisted all offers by financiers to
|
|
acquire his patents. In July 1897 he entrusted his cousin Jameson
|
|
Davis to form The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company Ltd which soon
|
|
became Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Co., and ultimately the Marconi
|
|
Company.
|
|
|
|
William Preece of the Post Office detached one of his assistants,
|
|
George S. Kemp, to help Marconi. Kemp was destined to become his
|
|
right-hand man and served Marconi faithfully throughout his life. By
|
|
today's standards, Marconi can be said to have been a highly
|
|
successful entrepreneur. He had the great knack of selecting the
|
|
right man for the job, and inspired deep loyalty in his staff. He
|
|
regarded himself as an 'amateur' and often paid tribute to the work of
|
|
radio experimenters.
|
|
|
|
(Most of the above passages are quoted from 'A History of
|
|
the Marconi Company' by W.J.Baker, published by Methuen & Co Ltd.
|
|
reprinted in 1979.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER THREE
|
|
|
|
THE RADIO AMATEUR MOVEMENT
|
|
|
|
From the turn of the century enthusiastic young men who built
|
|
their own items of electrical and wireless apparatus were known as
|
|
"Wireless Experimenters". Many of them were later granted licences
|
|
for the use of "Wireless Telegraphy for experimental purposes" (in the
|
|
United Kingdom) by the Postmaster General under the terms of the 1904
|
|
Wireless Telegraphy Act. In his report to Parliament for the years
|
|
1905-1906 the P.M.G. stated that it was his wish "to promote
|
|
experimental investigations in this promising field".
|
|
|
|
In a book published in 1908 by R.P.Howgrave-Graham entitled
|
|
"Wireless Telegraphy for Amateurs" the word amateur seems to have been
|
|
used for the first time.
|
|
|
|
During the 1914-1918 war all wireless apparatus in the possession
|
|
of licensed amateurs was closed down under the Defence of the Realm
|
|
Act of 1914. Experimental transmission licences numbered 1,600.
|
|
|
|
After the end of the war an Inter-Departmental Committee was set
|
|
up and in its report to the Postmaster General dated April 1919 it
|
|
stated: "We are of the opinion that the number of stations existing in
|
|
July 1914 was excessive from the point of view of government control
|
|
in case of emergency and the necessity of preventing interference with
|
|
government and commercial working; further there was no justification
|
|
for it from the point of view of the encouragement of research or
|
|
development of industry".
|
|
|
|
But there was a magnanimous relaxation in the Defence Regulations
|
|
when the Post Office notified manufacturers of electrical apparatus
|
|
that restriction on the sale of buzzers had been removed. Buzzers
|
|
could now be sold without enquiry as to the use to which the purchaser
|
|
proposed to put them!!!
|
|
|
|
During 1919 many issues of WIRELESS WORLD considered "the amateur
|
|
position", and a leading article in the March issue began with a
|
|
quotation attributed to Marconi:
|
|
|
|
"I consider that the existence of a body of independent
|
|
and often enthusiastic amateurs constitutes a valuable
|
|
asset towards the further development of wireless
|
|
telegraphy."
|
|
|
|
In a subsequent letter to the Editor Marconi wrote:
|
|
|
|
"In my opinion it would be a mistaken policy to
|
|
introduce legislation to prevent amateurs experimenting
|
|
with wireless telegraphy (which the authorities were
|
|
contemplating). Had it not been for amateurs, wireless
|
|
telegraphy as a great world-fact might not have existed at
|
|
all. A great deal of the development and progress of
|
|
wireless telegraphy is due to the efforts of amateurs."
|
|
|
|
John Ambrose Fleming, the inventor of the diode valve, also wrote
|
|
to the Editor of W.W. as follows:
|
|
|
|
"It is a matter of common knowledge that a large part
|
|
of the important inventions in connection with wireless
|
|
telegraphy have been the work of amateurs and private
|
|
research and not the outcome of official brains or the
|
|
handiwork of military or naval organisations. In fact we
|
|
may say that wireless telegraphy itself in its inception
|
|
was an amateur product. Numerous important inventions such
|
|
as the crystal detector, the oscillating valve, the triode
|
|
valve -- have been due to private or amateur work. If full
|
|
opportunities for such non-official research work are not
|
|
restored, the progress of the art of radio telegraphy and
|
|
radio telephony will be greatly hindered."
|
|
|
|
Professor W.H.Eccles wrote:
|
|
|
|
"Improvements and invention must be stimulated to the
|
|
utmost. It is not impossible to devise laws to impose
|
|
restrictions upon the emission of wireless waves as will
|
|
preclude interference with the public radio service of the
|
|
future (R.F.I. & T.V.I.?!!) and yet allow liberal
|
|
opportunities for the experimental study of wireless
|
|
telegraphy."
|
|
|
|
NOTE. The above passages are taken from WORLD AT THEIR FINGERTIPS
|
|
by John Clarricoats, O.B.E.,G6CL, published by the R.S.G.B. in 1968.
|
|
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER FOUR
|
|
|
|
THE 1921 TRANSATLANTIC TESTS
|
|
|
|
Most commercial experimental transmissions in wireless telegraphy
|
|
before World War I were carried out on the "long" wavelengths, though
|
|
they were not called that at the time. Transmissions by amateurs in
|
|
the United Kingdom and the U.S.A. on the other hand were made around
|
|
200 metres (1.5MHz). In the U.S.A. amateurs were permitted to use a
|
|
D.C.input of 1,000 watts to the anode of the final stage of their
|
|
transmitters. In the U.K. the maximum power allowed was 10 watts and
|
|
the combined height and length of the transmitting aerial was not to
|
|
exceed 100 feet. So when the first attempt to span the Atlantic was
|
|
made in February of 1921 it was natural that the American stations
|
|
should do the transmitting and the Europeans the listening.
|
|
|
|
About 25 U.S. amateur stations participated in the tests, which
|
|
took place early in the morning on the 2nd, 4th and 6th of February
|
|
1921. Although about 200 European stations had indicated their
|
|
intention to listen only 30 actually submitted logs. And not a single
|
|
one of them was able to report hearing anything that could be
|
|
attributed to the American transmissions.
|
|
|
|
The then Editor of QST wrote: "We have tested most of the circuits
|
|
used by the Britishers and find them one and all decidedly inferior to
|
|
our standard American regenerative circuit using variometer tuning in
|
|
secondary and tertiary circuits. We would bet our new Spring hat that
|
|
if a good U.S. amateur with such a set and an Armstrong
|
|
superheterodyne could be sent to England, reception of the U.S.
|
|
transmissions would straightaway become commonplace." Strong language.
|
|
|
|
In September of the same year it was announced that a prominent
|
|
U.S. amateur Paul Godley 2ZE would be going to Europe to take part in
|
|
the second series of tests planned for December. His expenses were
|
|
being paid by the A.R.R.L. which already boasted having 15,000
|
|
transmitting members. In the U.S.A. distances of over 2,000 miles
|
|
had already been achieved.
|
|
|
|
During his brief stay of a few hours in London Paul Godley was
|
|
introduced to Senator Marconi, to Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry
|
|
Jackson, to Alan A.Campbell Swinton and many other distinguished
|
|
members of the Wireless Society of London, as the R.S.G.B. was then
|
|
called.
|
|
|
|
Paul Godley first set up his receiving equipment at Wembley Park,
|
|
Middlesex but soon decided that the electrical noises in the area
|
|
would not permit reception of the weak transatlantic signals. He
|
|
therefore obtained permission to set up the European receiving station
|
|
at Ardrossan a coast town near Glasgow, Scotland. The actual site was
|
|
a large field heavily covered with seaweed. He was assisted in the
|
|
erection of his receiving antenna by a member of the Marconi
|
|
International Marine Communications Company. 1,300 feet of
|
|
phosphor-bronze wire was stretched 12 feet above the ground on ten
|
|
poles spaced equally along the full length of the wire which was
|
|
earthed at the far end through a non-inductive resistor. This was the
|
|
first Beverage type receiving array ever erected in the United
|
|
Kingdom. Before the actual tests took place the length of the wire
|
|
was reduced to 850 feet.
|
|
|
|
At 00.50 GMT on December 9th 1921 Godley identified signals from
|
|
1BCG located at Greenwich, Connecticut. The station there was manned by
|
|
six members of the Radio Club of America. One of the operators was
|
|
E.Howard Armstrong inventor of the regenerative detector,
|
|
super-regeneration and the supersonic heterodyne receiver, though the
|
|
French claim that the superhet was first designed by Lucien Levy of
|
|
Paris.
|
|
|
|
Two days later the historic first complete message transmitted by
|
|
U.S. amateurs and received in Europe on the "short waves" (actually 230
|
|
metres) heralded a new era. The message read:
|
|
|
|
No.1 de 1BCG. WORDS 12. NEW YORK DECEMBER 11 1921. TO
|
|
PAUL GODLEY ARDROSSAN SCOTLAND. HEARTY
|
|
CONGRATULATIONS. SIGNED BURGHARD INMAN GRINAN ARMSTRONG
|
|
AMY CRONKHITE.
|
|
|
|
Eight British amateurs had also copied the message correctly. One
|
|
of them was W.E."Bill" Corsham 2UV of Willesden, London who was later
|
|
credited by the R.S.G.B. and the A.R.R.L. as being the inventor of
|
|
the QSL card. Bill had used a simple three valve receiver and an
|
|
inverted-L wire 100 feet long compared to Godley's huge Beverage
|
|
array.
|
|
|
|
In the summer of 1922 amateurs in France began to get licences and
|
|
Leon Deloy 8AB President of the Radio Club of Nice in southern France
|
|
started hearing British stations. After a visit to the U.S.A. Deloy
|
|
was able to improve his equipment and on November 27th 1923 he
|
|
contacted Fred Schnell 1MO of West Hartford, Connecticut for the first
|
|
ever 2-way QSO across the Atlantic. They used the "useless"
|
|
wavelengths around 100 metres.
|
|
|
|
INTERNATIONAL DX had come to stay.
|
|
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER FIVE
|
|
|
|
THE FIRST GREEK RADIO AMATEURS
|
|
|
|
As no licences were issued for many years there are no official
|
|
records to be consulted. Early activity was mainly in and around
|
|
Athens but there may have been one or two stations in other parts of
|
|
the country which we never heard in the capital. At the time of
|
|
writing (1987) four of the original pioneers in the Athens area are
|
|
alive and three of them are currently active on the H.F. bands.
|
|
|
|
Athanassis 'Takis' Coumbias has QSL cards addressed to him dated
|
|
1929 when he was a short wave listener in Odessa, Russia with the SWL
|
|
callsign RK-1136. In 1931 his family, like many other Greek families
|
|
in Russia, moved to Athens where Takis built a 4-valve transmitter
|
|
with which he was very active on 40 and 20 metre CW using the callsign
|
|
SV1AAA.
|
|
|
|
I frequently operated his station myself and when I asked him why
|
|
he had chosen that particular callsign he gave me what proved to be a
|
|
truly prophetic answer. "It will be ages", he said, "before the Greek
|
|
State officially recognizes the very existence of radio amateurs and
|
|
begins to issue transmitting licences to them. After that it might
|
|
take another 50 years for them to get to the three-letter series
|
|
beginning with SV1AAA."
|
|
|
|
In actual fact this is what happened: legislation was enacted 40
|
|
years later and the callsign SV1AAA was officially allocated to Nikita
|
|
Venizelos after 54 years had elapsed!
|
|
|
|
Although at the time there was no official recognition of amateur
|
|
radio in Greece, the existence and identity of the handful of 'under
|
|
cover' operators was known to the Head of the W/T section at the
|
|
Ministry of Posts & Telegraphs (Greek initials T.T.T.) Stefanos
|
|
Eleftheriou who did more than anyone else to encourage and promote the
|
|
development of our hobby. In fact, following a minor brush with the
|
|
police in 1937 (described by N2DOE later in this book) Eleftheriou
|
|
issued three licences 'for experimental research in connection with
|
|
the propagation of short waves' on the basis of earlier legislation
|
|
governing the use of wireless telegraphy which really had nothing to
|
|
do with amateur radio. The recipients of these three licences were
|
|
Costas 'Bill' Tavaniotis SV1KE, Aghis Cazazis SV1CA and Nikos Katselis
|
|
SV1NK. As there were no relevant regulations the choice of callsign
|
|
was left to the individual operators. For instance, Tavaniotis ran
|
|
his own electrical and electronic business called KONSTAV ELECTRIC so
|
|
he decided to use "KE" as his callsign.
|
|
|
|
As far as I know the following ten amateurs were active in the
|
|
Athens area in 1937:
|
|
|
|
1.Takis Coumbias.....................SV1AAA
|
|
2.'Bill' Tavaniotis..................SV1KE (silent key)
|
|
3.Polycarpos Psomiadis..............SV1AZ (now N2DOE)
|
|
4.Aghis Cazazis......................SV1CA (silent key)
|
|
5.Nikos Katselis.....................SV1NK (silent key)
|
|
6.George Zarifis...............SV1SP/SV6SP (now SV1AA)
|
|
7.Nasos Coucoulis....................SV1SM (silent key)
|
|
8.George Yiapapas....................SV1GY (now QRT)
|
|
9.Menelaos Paidousis.................SV1MP
|
|
10.Norman Joly........................SV1RX (now G3FNJ)
|
|
|
|
|
|
In 1952 Costas Karayiannis who ran a big business called RADIO
|
|
KARAYIANNI published an amazingly comprehensive book entitled ELLINIKI
|
|
RADIOFONIA which means 'Greek Broadcasting'. It contained a vast
|
|
treasure of information on many subjects allied to broadcasting, and
|
|
there was a page entitled DAWN (1930-1940) which dealt with amateur
|
|
radio activity in Greece before World War II. It confirmed most of
|
|
the names listed above as can be seen in the photo-copy of the
|
|
original Greek text, and it mentioned three others: George Gerardos
|
|
SV1AG, (silent key), S.Stefanou and Mikes Psalidas who was allocated
|
|
the callsign SV1AF 20 years later, though he, like many others had
|
|
come on the air after the end of the war with an unofficial callsign.
|
|
|
|
Were all these operators who functioned strictly in accordance
|
|
with international regulations pirates? In my view they were
|
|
certainly not pirates. If the State was officially unaware of the
|
|
existence of amateur radio how could they apply for licences and be
|
|
issued with official callsigns?
|
|
|
|
Later in this book N2DOE describes how a handful of amateurs had
|
|
prepared draft legislation in 1937 at the request of Stefanos
|
|
Eleftheriou of the Ministry but the outbreak of World War II in
|
|
September 1939 had prevented him from taking any action in this
|
|
connection.
|
|
|
|
The island of Crete in southern Greece was first heard on the air
|
|
in 1938 when George Zarifis came on 40 metre CW using the callsign
|
|
SV6SP. His transmitter consisted of a single metal 6L6 crystal
|
|
oscillator with an input of about 7 watts. For reception he used an
|
|
American CASE broadcast receiver in which he had fitted a BFO. In a
|
|
very short period he had about 500 QSOs.
|
|
|
|
Forty four years later some of the younger generation of operators
|
|
who had not heard of this early activity from Crete allocated the
|
|
prefix SV9 to the island. Rather illogically they allocated SV8 to
|
|
all the other islands irrespective of their geographical position and
|
|
with yet another exception -- SV5 for the twelve Dodecanese islands.
|
|
|
|
General George Zarifis (retired) SV1AA as he is now, had started
|
|
playing with 'wireless' a long long time before he went to Crete. In
|
|
1921 when he was in the 4th form at school he had bought two kits of
|
|
parts from France and put them together with the help of his
|
|
fellow-student George Grabinger. The kit consisted of a bright
|
|
emitter triode in an oscillating circuit. The heater supply was a 4
|
|
volt accumulator, and a dozen or so dry cells, with an earphone in
|
|
series, supplied the anode voltage. The tuned circuit consisted of a
|
|
coil with a small pressure operated capacitor across it. A carbon
|
|
microphone with a dry cell in series was connected to two or three
|
|
turns of wire wound over the coil. The assembled kits were tested
|
|
close to each other and they worked. Later, when they had connected
|
|
random length wire antennas to the circuits the two schoolboys were
|
|
able to talk to each other across the 400 metres which separated their
|
|
homes. These contacts quite definitely heralded the dawn of amateur
|
|
radio in Greece at about the same time as the 1921 Transatlantic tests
|
|
were taking place.
|
|
|
|
On the 1st of September 1939 Hitler's armies invaded Poland.
|
|
Great Britain which had a treaty with Poland was compelled to declare
|
|
war on Germany two days later on the 3rd, followed by France. Canada
|
|
and Australia declared war on Germany the next day. All the radio
|
|
amateurs in Athens immediately dismantled their transmitters and
|
|
dispersed the components.
|
|
|
|
So ended the first phase of amateur radio activity in Greece.
|
|
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER SIX
|
|
|
|
WORLD WAR II AND AFTER IN GREECE
|
|
|
|
Socrates Coutroubis SV1AE described to me how his interest in
|
|
radio was aroused in 1935 when he was 13 years old. His father had
|
|
decided to buy a domestic radio receiver.
|
|
|
|
"Of course in 1935 Athens had no broadcasting service", Socrates
|
|
said, "so the receiver had to be able to tune in to the short wave
|
|
broadcasting bands. As we already had a Westinghouse refrigerator my
|
|
father decided we should try one of their receivers. When I say 'try'
|
|
I must explain that it was the usual thing to ask a number of agents
|
|
to submit their latest models for comparison at one's home. I
|
|
remember that together with the Westinghouse, we had an Atwater Kent,
|
|
Philco, RCA, Stromberg-Carlson and several sets of European
|
|
manufacture such as Philips, Blaupunkt, Saba etc. We finally settled
|
|
for the German Saba because it was the prettiest and blended better
|
|
with our living room furniture!
|
|
|
|
"There were very few stations to be found on the short waves. But
|
|
I remember the Dutch station PCJ run by the Philips company in
|
|
Eindhoven. The announcer was Edward Startz who spoke perfect English
|
|
and about a dozen other languages. "This is the Happy Station,
|
|
broadcasting from the Netherlands" he would say cheerfully.
|
|
|
|
"A couple of years after we had bought the radio we were returning
|
|
from an open air movie round about midnight when I noticed a book on
|
|
sale at a road-side kiosk. It was entitled THE RADIO AMATEUR'S
|
|
HANDBOOK published by the A.R.R.L. I had no idea what the initials
|
|
stood for. The price was astronomical for my pocket but after a
|
|
little coercion I got my father to buy it for me. When I began to
|
|
read it I discovered the existence of radio amateurs. It was the 1939
|
|
edition and I found a circuit for a receiver which looked simple
|
|
enough for me to try. It was described as a regenerative detector and
|
|
audio amplifier.
|
|
|
|
"At that time the best place to buy components in Athens was at a
|
|
store called Radio Karayianni, but three others shops also stocked
|
|
valves (tubes) and components. One was the Electron run by George
|
|
Spanos, who was the agent for the Dutch Philips company. Then there
|
|
was a shop in a basement next door, Konstav Electric, owned by 'Bill'
|
|
Tavaniotis SV1KE. A wide range of components were also stocked by the
|
|
Raytheon agent, Nick Katselis SV1NK.
|
|
|
|
"I obtained some plug-in forms and wound the coils carefully
|
|
according to the instructions but unfortunately the receiver didn't
|
|
work very well, if at all. When I asked a few friends they suggested I
|
|
should shorten the very long wires I had used between the components,
|
|
and sure enough I had the greatest thrill of my life when for the
|
|
first time I heard Rome on short waves on my very own home-made
|
|
receiver. Outstanding stations in the broadcast band in those days
|
|
were Trieste in northern Italy, Katowice in Poland, Breslau in Germany
|
|
and Toulouse in south-west France.
|
|
|
|
"Although I had read about the activities of radio amateurs in the
|
|
Handbook I had not yet heard any of the half dozen or so stations that
|
|
were already operating on CW and AM telephony in the Athens area.
|
|
|
|
"My father used to buy the periodical LONDON CALLING which
|
|
contained the overseas programmes of the B.B.C. as well as the
|
|
programmes of the principal European broadcasting stations. This
|
|
publication also carried advertisements and it was there that I first
|
|
saw an illustration of the Hammarlund Super Pro and realised that
|
|
there were receivers specially designed for the reception of short
|
|
waves.
|
|
|
|
"But during the German/Italian occupation of Greece between 1941
|
|
and 1944 my little home-made receiver played a vital role in enabling
|
|
us to listen (secretly) to the B.B.C. broadcasts because the
|
|
authorities had sealed all radios to the broadcast (medium wave) band
|
|
and to the frequency of Radio Athens. Most people devised ingenuous
|
|
methods of listening to stations other than Athens.
|
|
|
|
"After the end of the war a friend of mine who returned to Athens
|
|
from Cairo brought me the 1945 edition of the A.R.R.L.Handbook, which
|
|
is still on the shelf as you can see."
|
|
|
|
Socrates explained that in 1945 there was complete political
|
|
upheaval in Greece, owing to the events that had taken place during
|
|
the foreign occupation, so the General Election of that year was
|
|
carried out under the supervision of foreign observers from the
|
|
U.S.A., the United Kingdom & France. The Russians did not send a
|
|
mission.
|
|
|
|
"Owing to my knowledge of English I was employed by the American
|
|
mission to act as interpreter. One day when I was off duty I was
|
|
taken by a friend to a signals unit where there were many pieces of
|
|
equipment which had been 'liberated', and I was able to buy a BC 342
|
|
receiver. Later when Harry Barnett SV1WE who was in the Press
|
|
Department of the British Embassy returned to England I bought his
|
|
Hallicrafter SX28.
|
|
|
|
"It was at Harry's house in Kolonaki that I had my first taste of
|
|
amateur radio in action. He had a National HRO for reception and he
|
|
had constructed a 50-watt transmitter using surplus components which
|
|
were in plentiful supply at that time.
|
|
|
|
"Another friend of mine, Jim Liverios, was employed at the Civil
|
|
Aviation transmitter site on a hill south of Nea Smyrni.The American
|
|
Mission had set up their short wave transmitters on the same site and
|
|
later Interpol installed their own equipment as well. Liverios was
|
|
always on night shift because he attended the University during the
|
|
day. I still don't know how he ever managed to get any sleep. When
|
|
things were quiet he would 'borrow' a 5 Kw transmitter and tune it in
|
|
the 20 metre band. Using a callsign of his own choice (probably a
|
|
different one every night) he would have contacts with the whole
|
|
world. On his invitation I went there at midnight one night and
|
|
stayed until the morning. I remember we had QSOs with Cuba, Chile,
|
|
New Zealand and Australia."
|
|
|
|
|
|
THE AFFAIR OF THE PIRAEUS POLICE.
|
|
|
|
In 1947, there was a war in northern Greece which some people
|
|
called a civil war and others a war against the guerrillas, depending
|
|
on whose side they were on. Suddenly one morning all the Athens
|
|
newspapers came out with some amazing headlines:
|
|
|
|
"THE WIRELESS TRANSMITTERS OF THE COMMUNISTS HAVE BEEN SEIZED IN
|
|
ATHENS"
|
|
|
|
"WIRELESS TRANSMITTERS FOUND IN COMMUNIST HANDS"
|
|
|
|
"HOW THE FIVE TRANSMITTERS OF THE COMMUNISTS WERE DISCOVERED"
|
|
|
|
"THE SIX INSTALLATIONS SEIZED BY THE POLICE"
|
|
|
|
Two of the newspapers printed the identical photograph (included
|
|
in the montage) with the following caption, 'The Communist
|
|
transmitters seized by the Piraeus police'. This was a photograph of
|
|
the shack of Mikes Psalidas SV1AF. At the top right one can see a
|
|
2-inch home-made monitor oscilloscope, which the newspapers described
|
|
as a 'powerful radar'!
|
|
|
|
"During the last three days", wrote one newspaper, "the police in
|
|
Piraeus have been investigating a very serious case implicating
|
|
leading cadres of the Communist party." Of course, it was nothing of
|
|
the sort. The equipment they had seized belonged to five radio
|
|
amateurs, George Gerardos SV1AG, Mikes Psalidas SV1AF, Nasos Coucoulis
|
|
SV1AC, Aghis Cazazis SV1CA and Sotiris Stefanou who didn't have a
|
|
callsign yet. In fact Mikes Psalidas was not even at home at the time
|
|
of the police raid, as he was in a military camp in the outskirts of
|
|
Athens, doing his compulsory military service. The newspapers
|
|
described in detail what had been found. "At the house of Mikes
|
|
Psalidas, who is a student at the Athens Polytechnic, the police found
|
|
wireless telegraphy receiving equipment (a National HRO), wireless
|
|
telephony equipment in full working order, that is, two transmitting
|
|
microphones, a step-down transformer and various other items."
|
|
|
|
The same newspaper went on "Unfortunately, at the house of Aghis
|
|
Cazazis, at 25 Tenedou street, the search was inconclusive because a
|
|
certain person, well known to the police, and whose arrest is
|
|
imminent, removed a high power transmitter just before the police
|
|
arrived and disappeared with it."
|
|
|
|
Another newspaper referred to "telegrams in code", received from
|
|
abroad and from the secret headquarters of the Communists, "which are
|
|
now being deciphered by a special department". These were SV1AG's
|
|
little collection of QSL cards.
|
|
|
|
Stefanos Eleftheriou of the Ministry immediately took up the
|
|
matter. Firstly, he pointed out to the Piraeus police that Athens did
|
|
not come under their jurisdiction, and they had no right to arrest
|
|
anybody there without a warrant. Secondly, all the five radio
|
|
amateurs they had arrested were known for their nationalistic
|
|
political convictions, particularly Psalidas whose father was a senior
|
|
officer of the Royal Hellenic airforce.
|
|
|
|
Before the 'suspects' were released and their confiscated
|
|
equipment returned to them, they were warned not to speak to newspaper
|
|
reporters at the risk of getting a kick up their backsides. This was
|
|
to prevent the public from learning how ludicrous had been the
|
|
accusations, and how completely unjustified the arrests had been. But
|
|
one newspaper came out the following day with a banner headline "THE
|
|
OWNERS OF THE WIRELESS AND RADAR EQUIPMENT ALL TURNED OUT TO BE
|
|
STAUNCH ROYALISTS!" This paper sent a reporter to interview SV1AC.
|
|
They wrote, "In reply to a question from our reporter, Mr Coucoulis
|
|
said that when the police realised the foolishness of their action,
|
|
they issued a summons against him under Law 4749, which has absolutely
|
|
nothing to do with amateur radio."
|
|
|
|
"During the ten years following the end of World War II there were
|
|
about 15 to 20 very active amateurs in the Athens area, all using
|
|
callsigns of their own choice because no government legislation had
|
|
yet been enacted. Most of these operators subsequently obtained
|
|
licences and had to change to the official series. I remember two YLs
|
|
who were very popular in Europe and the U.S.A. because they spoke
|
|
several languages fluently, but they never re-appeared when licences
|
|
began to be issued."
|
|
|
|
Since 1945 the U.S. and British signals units were authorised by
|
|
the Greek Ministry of Communications to issue calls to military and
|
|
diplomatic personnel in the series SV0WA in the case of American staff
|
|
and SV0AA for the British.
|
|
|
|
Socrates continued: "I heard that the Americans had formed a club
|
|
called 'Attica Amateur Radio Club' in Kifissia, a suburb to the north
|
|
of Athens, and in due course I was able to become a member."
|
|
|
|
"In 1954", Socrates continued, "George Zarifis (currently SV1AA)
|
|
who was a regular army officer in the Legal Branch approached Mr
|
|
Nicolis who was Director of the Wireless Division at the Ministry of
|
|
Communications and asked him 'Since you have authorised the Americans
|
|
and the British to issue licences to their personnel, why do you not
|
|
grant the same facility to us Greek amateurs?'. To which Nicolis had
|
|
replied 'There is no law of the land recognising the very existence of
|
|
radio amateurs so how can I issue licences to you?'.
|
|
|
|
"It was then that we decided to form an association whose
|
|
principal objective would be the enactment of legislation recognising
|
|
officially the existence of radio amateurs in Greece. As a recognised
|
|
body we would then be able to go back to Nicolis and get him to pursue
|
|
the matter.
|
|
|
|
"That was how, late in 1957, we formed the Radio Amateur
|
|
Association of Greece, R.A.A.G., Greek initials E.E.R.
|
|
|
|
"At the same time, after considerable effort, we got the Ministry
|
|
to issue 7 licences based on the Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1930 (No
|
|
4797) and the regulations relating to Law 1049 of 1949, as well as a
|
|
document dated July 8th 1957 issued by the radio division of the
|
|
Central Intelligence service (Greek initials K.Y.P.-R). This order
|
|
authorised the installation of a 50 watt transmitter to an applicant
|
|
under certain strict limitations, one of which was that the station
|
|
could only be operated from 06.00 to 08.00 hours and from 13.00 to
|
|
midnight. The seven lucky recipients are shown in the accompanying
|
|
photograph.
|
|
|
|
Akis Lianos SV1AD, Socrates Coutroubis SV1AE, Nasos Coucoulis
|
|
SV1AC (silent key), George Zarifis SV1AA, Mikes Psalidas SV1AF, George
|
|
Vernardakis SV1AB and George Gerardos SV1AG (silent key).
|
|
|
|
"At that time (1958) my AM station consisted of a Hammarlund SP600
|
|
receiver and a home-built transmitter using an Italian Geloso
|
|
VFO-exciter driving a pair of 6146s in the final, with anode and
|
|
screen modulation by a pair of 807s in class AB2. I had also assembled
|
|
a double conversion receiver using a Geloso front end. This was
|
|
typical of the equipment used in Greece and Italy in the early 1960s.
|
|
|
|
"Licences continued to be issued until 1967 when the Junta
|
|
Colonels Papadopoulos and Patakos established the military
|
|
dictatorship. We were all ordered to seal our equipment and obtain
|
|
written confirmation from the nearest Police authority that the
|
|
disablement had been carried out.
|
|
|
|
"Six months later, in December of 1967 we started getting our
|
|
licences back. Most of us believed that because some of the younger
|
|
officers in the military government had received training at the
|
|
Pentagon in the U.S.A. they convinced their superiors that it was
|
|
better for the genuine amateurs to be allowed to operate their
|
|
equipment under close supervision by the military and under new
|
|
regulations, rather than have under cover operators starting up all
|
|
over again.
|
|
|
|
"George Gerardos SV1AG had a friend Oresti Yiaka who was involved
|
|
in government telecommunications and it was through him that draft
|
|
legislation for the issue of amateur licences was instigated, but not
|
|
for the first time. Unsuccessful attempts had been made before the war.
|
|
|
|
"In 1965 when George Papandreou was Prime Minister, on the very
|
|
day when the Draft Bill was going to be put before Parliament the
|
|
government resigned and another 10 years went by. When legislation
|
|
was finally published in the Government Gazette in 1972, owing to the
|
|
prevailing political situation (military dictatorship) it had serious
|
|
limitations imposed by some Ministries which had to look after their
|
|
own interests, especially the Ministry of National Defence. But George
|
|
Gerardos, SV1AG, who had been closely involved, decided that it would
|
|
be better to overlook certain details which may seem strange to us at
|
|
the present time - details which could be rectified at a later date,
|
|
provided the law was finally on the Statute book. For instance, I
|
|
refer to the very restricted frequencies we were allocated in the
|
|
80-metre band, 3.500 to 3.600 MHz. Obviously when we began
|
|
transmitting SSB telephony below 3.600 we were greeted with angry
|
|
protestations from the CW operators there. And what was worse, the
|
|
voices of Greek amateurs were not heard in the DX portion of the phone
|
|
allocation from 3.750 to 3.800 MHz.
|
|
|
|
"Unfortunately, there was another and more serious snag. The last
|
|
paragraph of the Law said that it would come into force only after
|
|
publication in the Government Gazette of regulations clarifying
|
|
certain details and procedures. So we were back to square one.
|
|
|
|
"But this did not prevent the General Staff of the military
|
|
dictatorship from continuing to issue new licences under the special
|
|
restrictions they had laid down. When the dictatorship came to an end
|
|
the new government finally published Regulation 271 on April 30th
|
|
1976, which made the 1972 law fully operative."
|
|
|
|
During the period of the military dictatorship a break-away club
|
|
was formed by Dinos Psiloyiannis SV1DB who added the word 'national'
|
|
to its name making the Greek initials E.E.E.R. His motives were
|
|
rather dubious, one of them being that he objected to a regulation
|
|
which required an applicant for a licence to produce a declaration
|
|
signed by the President and the Secretary of Radio Amateur Association
|
|
of Greece. Psiloyiannis, who had contacts with the military
|
|
authorities (both his father and brother were officers) declared "I
|
|
will form my own association and issue declarations myself." By this
|
|
manoeuvre he obtained licences for quite a few newcomers, but after a
|
|
year or two his club ceased to function and most if not all of its
|
|
members joined the R.A.A.G.
|
|
|
|
An amendment of Law 1244 of 1972 published in the Government
|
|
Gazette No.114 dated June 3rd 1988 finally abolished the requirement
|
|
of the controversial declaration, as well as the rule which said that
|
|
before anyone could apply for a licence they had to join an officially
|
|
recognised association or club.
|
|
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER SEVEN
|
|
|
|
PIONEERS IN GREECE
|
|
|
|
1. General George Zarifis (retired) SV1AA.
|
|
|
|
As recorded in detail in chapter 5, George was undoubtedly the
|
|
first Greek amateur to have two-way contacts using radio telephony,
|
|
way back in 1921. He was also the first amateur to operate from the
|
|
island of Crete in 1938.
|
|
|
|
|
|
2. Dr Costas Fimerelis SV1DH. (Transequatorial propagation).
|
|
|
|
On October 9th 1988 at 23.10 GMT a new world distance record was
|
|
established on the 50 MHz band by the Greek experimental station SZ2DH
|
|
operated by Costas Fimerelis SV1DH and a station in Tokyo, when it was
|
|
proved that the signals had travelled a distance of 30,650 over the
|
|
South American continent. This is 15,000 kilometres more than the
|
|
short path between the two stations, over which there was absolutely
|
|
no propagation at that moment in time.
|
|
|
|
A simple 5 element Yagi and a power of 100 watts was used at
|
|
SZ2DH. The contact was on CW but the signals were so strong that it
|
|
might well have been on SSB. It is estimated that 8 hops were needed
|
|
to cover this record distance.
|
|
|
|
Most people know by now that SV1DH was one of the principal
|
|
stations involved in the very successful Transequatorial propagation
|
|
tests which took place during the 21st sunspot cycle between 1977 and
|
|
1983. Costas gave me a simplified explanation of the phenomenon first
|
|
noticed by Ray Cracknell ZE2JV and Roland Whiting 5B4WR way back in
|
|
September 1957, namely that VHF signals can travel great distances
|
|
across the equator (5,000 to 8,000 kilometres) during the years of
|
|
high sunspot activity.
|
|
|
|
Costas said that usually stations located approximately the same
|
|
distance north and south of the magnetic (not geographic) equator can
|
|
contact each other shortly after sunset at both locations. The first
|
|
such QSO took place on the 10th April 1978 between ZE2JV and 5B4WR.
|
|
Two days later ZE2JV contacted George Vernardakis SV1AB and this
|
|
contact was followed a few days later with QSOs with SV1DH and SV1CS.
|
|
(Fuller details of these contacts are given later in this book in the
|
|
interview with SV1AB).
|
|
|
|
In October 1976 there was a rumour that 145 MHz signals had been
|
|
heard directly between Argentina and Venezuela. With the imminent
|
|
beginning of sunspot cycle 21 many amateurs in the northern and
|
|
southern hemispheres began organizing tests on 50,144,220 and 432 MHz.
|
|
Within less than a year successful 2-way contact was established
|
|
between Argentina and Venezuela on 144 MHz.
|
|
|
|
Greece is favourably placed for TEP to countries in Africa where
|
|
there is considerable amateur radio activity, like Zimbabwe and the
|
|
Union of South Africa. So towards the end of 1977 SV1AB and SV1DH
|
|
began looking for colleagues in suitable geographic locations with the
|
|
appropriate equipment and the time and inclination to engage in tests
|
|
which could go on for months and months on end. Very soon the
|
|
following stations agreed to participate in the tests. The northern
|
|
group included SV1AB, SV1DH, 5B4WR and 5B4AZ. In the southern
|
|
hemisphere participants were ZE2JV (now G2AHU), ZS6PW, ZS6DN, ZS6LN
|
|
and ZS3B.
|
|
|
|
After 4 months of daily test schedules, early in 1978, successful
|
|
contacts took place on 144 MHz, some of which constituted world
|
|
distance records for that time, as can be seen in the accompanying
|
|
table. Amateurs in Malta, Italy, France and Spain soon began to
|
|
participate in the tests, as well as amateurs in other areas of South
|
|
Africa.
|
|
|
|
It can be seen from the world map that the magnetic dip (shown as
|
|
a heavy line) is very different to the geographic equator. The QTH of
|
|
SV1AB is in a suburb 10 kilometres north of SV1DH's so George's
|
|
contacts with the stations in Africa always had that edge on them.
|
|
|
|
In South Africa Dave Larson ZS6DN had set up a beacon which was
|
|
first heard in Athens by SV1AB in February 1979. Within a few days
|
|
ZS6DN had QSOs with SV1DH and SV1AB. The latter contact was a world
|
|
distance record via the F-regions of the ionosphere because of the
|
|
extra distance involved owing to the locations of the two Greek
|
|
stations, as mentioned in the previous paragraph.
|
|
|
|
For anyone who may be interested very comprehensive reports of the
|
|
work done in transequatorial propagation during cycle 21 and earlier
|
|
appeared in articles written by Ray Cracknell ZE2JV/G2AHU and Roland
|
|
Whiting 5B4WR/G3UYO in the June/July/August 1980 issues of Radio
|
|
Communuication, the journal of the R.S.G.B. and in the
|
|
November/December 1980 issues of QST.
|
|
|
|
|
|
RECORD TRANSEQUATORIAL PROPAGATION CONTACTS
|
|
DURING SUNSPOT CYLE 21
|
|
|
|
Stations MHz Date GMT Km
|
|
|
|
YV5ZZ/6 - LU1DAU 145.9 29/10/77 02.00 5,000~
|
|
World record distance on 144 MHz. First Western hemisphere contact.
|
|
|
|
JH6TEW - VK8WJ 144.1 10/02/78 11.50 5,060~
|
|
First Pacific area contact.
|
|
|
|
KP4EOR - LU5DJZ 145.1 12/02/78 00.12 6,340
|
|
New world distance record on 144 MHz.
|
|
|
|
YV5ZZ - LU3AAT 432.1 13/02/78 01.10 5,100
|
|
First reception of 432 MHz signals in Western hemisphere.
|
|
|
|
5B4WR - ZE2JV 144.1 10/04/78 17.40 5,800
|
|
First T.E.P. contact between Europe and Africa.
|
|
|
|
SV1AB - ZE2JV 144.1 12/04/78 18.00 6,260
|
|
First Greek distance record on 144 MHz.
|
|
|
|
SV1DH - ZS6DN 144.1 13/02/79 18.15 7,120
|
|
New world distance record on 144 MHz.
|
|
|
|
SV1DH - ZE2JV 432.3 20/03/79 18.20 6,250
|
|
First reception of 432 MHz signals between Europe and Africa.
|
|
|
|
I4EAT - ZS3B 144.1 31/03/79 18.50 7,890
|
|
World distance record (reception) on 144 MHz.
|
|
|
|
|
|
3. George Vernardakis SV1AB. (V.H.F.)
|
|
|
|
In March 1988 I visited George Vernardakis SV1AB (formerly F9QN of
|
|
Marseilles, France) who spoke to me about his contribution to the
|
|
transequatorial tests and his other experiments in connection with
|
|
Moonbounce, Meteor Scatter and Sporadic E propagation.
|
|
|
|
"In 1965" George told me, "I was the only SV station equipped for
|
|
contacts via meteor scatter so it was easy for me to make contacts
|
|
with many European stations. The longest distance I achieved was with
|
|
UA1DZ a Physics Professor at the University of Leningrad in the Soviet
|
|
Union."
|
|
|
|
Norman: "Forgive me for interrupting you, but please explain in
|
|
simple terms what you mean by meteor scatter."
|
|
|
|
George: "Meteor scatter is a way of making contacts on 2 metres by
|
|
reflection from meteorites - `shooting stars' as they are called
|
|
colloquially - which we see on clear nights during the summer. Of
|
|
course they are not falling stars at all - they are meteorites which
|
|
burn up when they hit the earth's atmosphere, leaving the trail that
|
|
we see. We take advantage of this phenomenon for bouncing our signals
|
|
off the trail but unfortunately it is a very short-lived event. Once
|
|
when there were a lot of meteorites I was able to maintain contact
|
|
with LX1SI of Luxembourg for a whole three minutes on SSB. It was
|
|
during the period of the Persides which usually occur for a week in
|
|
August when the earth's orbit takes it through this cloud of space
|
|
debris. Millions of meteorites can be as small as a grain of sand and
|
|
of course leave no visible trail when they strike the earth's
|
|
atmosphere. The earth goes through other major clusters in April and
|
|
in December. The phenomenon can also affect signals on lower
|
|
frequencies. One can be in QSO on 20 metres via ground wave with a
|
|
station a couple of hundred miles away with signals around s2 to s3.
|
|
Suddenly one or two words are heard at s9 which indicates a momentary
|
|
reflection off a meteorite trail."
|
|
|
|
George also explained that in order to defeat the brevity of the
|
|
time when communication was possible it was customary to record a
|
|
message on a tape recorder and transmit it at high speed. The other
|
|
station would also record at high speed and then play back at normal
|
|
speed to hear the message normally.
|
|
|
|
I asked SV1AB to tell me about Sporadic E propagation.
|
|
|
|
"In this form of contact the signals are reflected from an ionised
|
|
area 90 to 120 kilometres above the surface of the earth. I have been
|
|
having contacts by this method for about 18 years now even before the
|
|
advent of SSB on two metres. I have had contacts with England and
|
|
with Moscow to the north-east of Athens. The phenomenon occurs for
|
|
three or four months during the summer, and never during the winter.
|
|
The ionisation moves very rapidly sometimes - you may be talking to a
|
|
station in Malta and he suddenly disappears and a station in
|
|
Yugoslavia comes up on the same frequency."
|
|
|
|
"Every summer" George continued, "we get Troposcatter which allows
|
|
communication on all frequencies from VHF to 10 GHz even. This type of
|
|
propagation occurs during certain special meteorological conditions,
|
|
like high barometric pressure and extreme heat. We sometimes hear
|
|
stations in Malta and Sicily with very loud signals."
|
|
|
|
"In 1966 I built an aerial array consisting of 8 nine-element
|
|
Yagis for 2 metres with the axis of rotation pointing to the North
|
|
Star enabling me to track the Moon automatically. I was hoping to
|
|
make some Moonbounce contacts, but at that time it was very difficult
|
|
to construct low noise preamplifiers. After many days and hours of
|
|
trying I managed a single brief contact with F8DO in France. Some
|
|
time later I heard that Mike Staal K6MYC had heard me in California.
|
|
|
|
"The funny thing about this aerial array was that it enabled me to
|
|
receive television signals from Nigeria on Channel 3 but only when I
|
|
raised it up to an elevation of nearly 90 degrees."
|
|
|
|
Norman: "I understand that Costas Georgiou SV1OE is the only Greek
|
|
amateur who has had successful QSOs via Moonbounce."
|
|
|
|
George: "Yes indeed. But it was many years later, using a low
|
|
noise GASFET preamplifier. K1WHS in the U.S.A. has an array
|
|
consisting of 48 Yagis which enable him to contact stations with more
|
|
modest installations.
|
|
|
|
"In 1970 a technician from Stanford University came to Athens
|
|
because the tracking station they had set up on Mount Pendeli could
|
|
not pick the University's satellite, whereas they were getting good
|
|
signals from it in Spain. One of the assistants at the station told
|
|
the American that he knew an amateur who could pick up signals from
|
|
satellites, meaning me. The American, who happened to be an amateur
|
|
himself, immediately asked to see me. When he saw my 8 antenna array
|
|
he suggested we should use it to try and pick up the University
|
|
satellite. I pointed out to him that my array was for 144 MHz whereas
|
|
the satellite beacon was transmitting on 136 MHz. He gave me the
|
|
coordinates for the next pass and I rotated and raised my array in
|
|
anticipation. When the exact time arrived my modest receiver picked
|
|
up the satellite beacon loud and clear. The American got so excited he
|
|
asked me if he could use my telephone to call the University in the
|
|
U.S.A. He told them the satellite had been heard at last in Athens,
|
|
and by an amateur no less. Later I received a letter from NASA
|
|
thanking me for the assistance I had given. When the American left he
|
|
gave me that 50 MHz converter you can see there on the shelf."
|
|
|
|
Norman: "Tell me about your contribution to the transequatorial
|
|
tests of 1979."
|
|
|
|
SV1AB: "I had been in regular contact with ZS6LN on ten metres
|
|
long before Costas SV1DH appeared on the scene. I remember asking
|
|
ZS6LN why we should not receive South African stations on 2 metres
|
|
when we could hear them so well on 50 MHz. He had replied that the
|
|
two frequencies behaved in a very different manner, but there was no
|
|
harm in trying. He got ZS6PW and ZS6DN interested in the idea,
|
|
particularly ZS6DN who had much better aerials and a very good QTH.
|
|
He was the one who stood the better chance of being heard in Greece.
|
|
We arranged a schedule of transmitting and listening every evening.
|
|
First they transmitted and we listened, and then we transmitted and
|
|
they listened, and contact was maintained on ten metres."
|
|
|
|
Norman: "You said `every evening' --do you mean that the Sun has
|
|
something to do with this type of propagation?"
|
|
|
|
George: "Most certainly. All the contacts that were made
|
|
subsequently were at least one hour after the relevant part of the
|
|
ionosphere was in darkness."
|
|
|
|
George then described how the first signals were heard via
|
|
transequatorial propagation.
|
|
|
|
George: "First we heard the beacon on 144.160 MHz set up by Ray
|
|
Cracknell ZE2JV in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The date was
|
|
April 12th 1978 at 18.00 G.M.T. Ten months later I heard ZS6DN's
|
|
automatic beacon with a colossal signal, but he was not at home! I
|
|
went to 20 metres and put out a frantic CQ for any station in South
|
|
Africa but got no reply. I returned to the cross-band frequency on 10
|
|
metres which we used regularly for 28/50 MHz QSOs and managed to
|
|
contact a station in South Africa who was very far away from ZS6DN but
|
|
who kindly offered to QSP a message by telephone. He was told that
|
|
ZS6DN had gone out but would be back soon. I was terrified that the
|
|
opening would not last long enough. But in a few minutes I heard him
|
|
calling me slowly on CW and we exchanged reports at 17.20 G.M.T on
|
|
February 16th 1979. This was a new world record for the longest
|
|
distance on 2 metres
|
|
|
|
"Three days earlier, however, when I was not at home, Costas SV1DH
|
|
had established the first TEP contact between Greece and South Africa
|
|
when he contacted ZS6DN. As you know, my location is a mere 10
|
|
kilometres north of SV1DH's. I have a tape recording of my QSO with
|
|
ZS6DN as well as with ZS6PW whose signals came through a few minutes
|
|
later at 17.34 G.M.T. on that historic evening.(The local time in
|
|
Athens was 7.34 p.m.).Of course the distance record was broken again
|
|
on September 17th 1981 when I contacted ZS4BU who is 110 kilometres
|
|
further south than ZS6DN."
|
|
|
|
Norman: "Were all these contacts only on the key?"
|
|
|
|
George: "Yes, all the contacts were on CW. On several occasions we
|
|
tried SSB but there was so much distortion that not a single word
|
|
could be identified. TEP has a lot of flutter and fading and as you
|
|
can hear on the tapes even the morse comes through like a breathing
|
|
noise, not a clear tone. This applies to contacts between Greece and
|
|
South Africa. Contacts between Japan and Australia where the
|
|
distances involved are smaller, have been made on SSB."
|
|
|
|
Norman: "What about cycle 22?"
|
|
|
|
George: "see how things go. If anything is achieved it should be in
|
|
1990 or later. With modern equipment we shall be able to hear signals
|
|
that were buried in the noise in 1979."
|
|
|
|
4. Dr Spyros Tsaltas SV1AT & George Delikaris SV1AM. (Mobile).
|
|
|
|
The first two licensed amateurs to make contact on 2 metres in
|
|
Greece were Dr Spyros Tsaltas SV1AT and George Delikaris SV1AM. They
|
|
had put together the famous Heathkit `TWOER'. Crystals were plentiful
|
|
on the surplus market, but it was not easy to find two of the same
|
|
frequency. SV1AT transmitted on 144.720 and SV1AM on 145.135 MHz. The
|
|
first contact took place at 13.30 local time on the 21st of December
|
|
1963.
|
|
|
|
A few days later SV1AT had a cross-band QSO with George
|
|
Vernardakis SV1AB who was transmitting in the 20 metre band on 14.250
|
|
MHz A.M. as he had not completed his TWOER yet.
|
|
|
|
At that time SV1AT was the Secretary of the Radio Amateur
|
|
Association of Greece. He suggested to the Committee that the Club
|
|
should apply for a temporary licence to be granted to SV1AM enabling
|
|
him to transmit from his vehicle while in motion. The licensing
|
|
authority gave the licence "for experimental purposes only, and for a
|
|
period not exceeding one month".
|
|
|
|
And so it was that the first `mobile' QSO took place on 2 metres
|
|
between licensed Greek amateurs on the 27th of January 1965 at 19.25
|
|
local time. SV1AM was travelling in his car and SV1AT was at his home
|
|
QTH.
|
|
|
|
5. Costas Tzezairlidis SV4CG. (SSTV).
|
|
|
|
In 1970 Costas Tzezairlidis SV4CG built a unique electro
|
|
mechanical machine using two motors to achieve horizontal and vertical
|
|
scanning. He had found a motor which rotated at 960 R.P.M. which
|
|
corresponds to 16 revolutions per second, the exact speed required for
|
|
the horizontal scanning. The speed of the second motor was 1
|
|
revolution per second. The reciprocal motion was produced by a cam
|
|
through an 8:1 reduction gear. A weight attached to the microscope
|
|
pulled it back to start the next line. The microscope was focussed
|
|
sharply on the drum carrying the picture to be transmitted. Resolution
|
|
was excellent.
|
|
|
|
The `microscope' consisted of a cardboard tube with a 13 cm focal
|
|
length lens at one end and a Philips OAP12 photo-diode at the other
|
|
with another lens in front of it. This primitive microscope produced
|
|
a picture of reasonable quality.
|
|
|
|
For reception SV4CG made a converter using the long persistence P7
|
|
c.r.t. With this set-up Costas had his first SSTV contact on 40
|
|
metres with SV1AB on February 28th 1971. After that he had many
|
|
contacts on 7 and 14 MHz as can be seen from the extract from his log.
|
|
(The special commemorative prefix of SZ0 was used by all SV stations
|
|
during 1971).
|
|
|
|
|
|
6. Costas Georgiou SV1OE. (E.M.E.)
|
|
|
|
Up to the end of 1988 the only Greek amateur who had positively
|
|
authenticated Moonbounce contacts was Costas Georgiou SV1OE. His very
|
|
first contact was made in 1982 when he contacted VE7BQH in Canada on 2
|
|
metres. In the ensuing four years Costas managed to work four more
|
|
stations: K1WHS, SM4GVF, W5UN and KB8RQ.
|
|
|
|
In 1982 Costas had been trying for three years, without success, to
|
|
hear his own signal via Moonbounce. The reason for his failure was
|
|
that he was unaware of a very basic fact.
|
|
|
|
"I was completely ignorant of the Doppler shift effect", Costas
|
|
told me. "The frequency of received signals varies according to the
|
|
position of the moon. If it is to the East of your own location the
|
|
signals return 500 to 1,000 Hz below the original transmitted
|
|
frequency. For years I had been sending long dashes slowly and waiting
|
|
to hear my signals return on the same spot, which they never did.
|
|
This happens for one instant only, when the Moon is at 180 degrees
|
|
azimuth, exactly due south. When it moves to the west of south the
|
|
returning frequency is correspondingly higher. Using a 50Hz audio
|
|
filter (which is essential for Moonbounce) it is very easy to miss the
|
|
weak signals. Soon after I found out my ridiculous mistake I began to
|
|
hear my signals, naturally with a delay of one or two seconds because
|
|
of the enormous distance involved -- 770,000 kilometres, 385,000 there
|
|
and 385,000 back.
|
|
|
|
Costas continued: "My next problem was finding the moon. I had no
|
|
computer at the time and no Keplerian elements. I mounted a small
|
|
video camera in the centre of four 16-element Yagi antennas and
|
|
rotated the elevation and azimuth motors until I could see the moon in
|
|
the centre of the monitor in the shack. Of course when the sky was
|
|
overcast I was out of business. Much later when I obtained a little
|
|
Sinclair ZX80 computer life became easier.
|
|
|
|
"When I made my first contact I was simultaneously in QSO with
|
|
SV1AB and SV1IO on 1,296 MHz who could hear what was going on. I
|
|
remember SV1AB got very excited and began shouting `I can hear him, I
|
|
can hear him!' The QSO was with VE7BQH. Later Lionel sent me a very
|
|
valuable present, valuable not for its cost but for the fact that it
|
|
was something quite unobtainable in Greece at that time -- a very
|
|
low-noise preamplifier for 2 metres.
|
|
|
|
"After the successful launch of Oscar 10 those amateurs who had
|
|
complex antenna systems and low-noise receivers they had used for
|
|
Moonbounce congregated on 145.950 and spoke to each other on QRP which
|
|
prevented ordinary mortals from hearing them. By QRP I mean outputs
|
|
of half a watt or less. But when finally one day I broke into a net
|
|
QSO I arranged schedules for Moonbounce with two stations in Sweden.
|
|
I had a successful contact with one of them but never heard the other.
|
|
The reason may have been a very simple one: the polarisation of
|
|
signals returning from the Moon varies from one moment to the other,
|
|
so if you have been transmitting with horizontal polarisation and go
|
|
over to reception it is very easy to miss the answer of the other
|
|
station if the polarisation has changed."
|
|
|
|
SV1OE then explained the very strict procedure which must be
|
|
adhered to for Moonbounce schedules.
|
|
|
|
"Schedules are arranged to last one hour. The first station to
|
|
start transmitting on the hour must be the one whose QTH lies to the
|
|
east of the other. The calling frequency for Moonbounce is 144.011
|
|
MHz., and the duration of the call is 2 minutes, but for the first
|
|
minute and a half you call CQ DE SV1OE and during the last half minute
|
|
you also give the call of the station you are trying to contact, for
|
|
instance G3FNJ DE SV1OE. You must on no account transmit for more
|
|
than two minutes because at the beginning of the third minute the
|
|
other station will begin transmitting the same pattern of signals. But
|
|
if he has heard you he will alter the pattern. For the first half
|
|
minute he will send SV1OE DE G3FNJ and for the ensuing minute and a
|
|
half he will transmit the letter O which signifies that he has heard
|
|
your callsign completely and without difficulty i.e. Q5 in the Q Code.
|
|
If I have also heard your callsign completely I will send G3FNJ for
|
|
half a minute followed by RO for a minute and a half, which means that
|
|
I have also received your callsign and your O. And you will reply RO
|
|
73 which concludes the successful contact.
|
|
|
|
"There are one or two other letters that can be used. Sending M
|
|
signifies that I hear you well but can only copy 50% of your
|
|
transmission, equivalent to Q3. And the letter T signifies I hear you
|
|
but cannot read you at all - Q1.
|
|
|
|
"It has been found by experience that the best sending speed is 8
|
|
w.p.m. Sending slowly or very fast presents problems at the other
|
|
end."
|
|
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER EIGHT
|
|
|
|
PERSONAL REMINISCENCES AND ANECDOTES
|
|
|
|
The eight items which follow are not strictly part of the story of
|
|
the development of amateur radio, but they deal with some historical
|
|
events which are connected with our hobby. Two are of particular
|
|
interest: the account given to me by Takis Coumbias formerly SV1AAA of
|
|
the early days of amateur radio in Russia and the story of the Greek
|
|
broadcasts from Cairo, Egypt during the German/Italian occupation of
|
|
Greece in World War II.
|
|
|
|
Nearly all the photographs of the period were taken by the author.
|
|
|
|
1. Athanasios 'Takis' Coumbias (1909-1987)
|
|
|
|
When I met Takis in his office in May 1983 I told him I was
|
|
thinking of writing a small book about the history of amateur radio in
|
|
Greece before it was too late -- so many of the old timers had already
|
|
passed away. Little did we both suspect at the time that he also would
|
|
not live to see the finished project. I asked him how far back he
|
|
could remember.
|
|
|
|
"Well, I can start from 1924 when I was about 15 and living in
|
|
Odessa in the Soviet Union. There was a lot of interest in wireless
|
|
and two magazines were published in Russia which dealt mainly with the
|
|
construction of receivers. My interest was first aroused when a
|
|
friend of mine at school proudly showed me something he had just made.
|
|
It was, he told me, a variable capacitor and he was going to use it to
|
|
make a radio receiver. The contraption was enormous by today's
|
|
standards and must have weighed about half a kilo. My friend said it
|
|
had a capacity of 250 micro-micro farads, which meant absolutely
|
|
nothing to me at the time.
|
|
|
|
"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."
|
|
|
|
Norman: "Regeneration should have produced a whistle."
|
|
|
|
Takis: "Yes, indeed. And in a peculiar way. When I approached
|
|
the receiver my hand produced the whistle."
|
|
|
|
Norman: "Hand capacity effect."
|
|
|
|
Takis: "And foot capacity effect as well! When I approached my
|
|
knee to the metal leg of the work-bench I would lose the station I had
|
|
been listening to." He said the tuning capacitor he had made was
|
|
obviously too small and he had to alter the taps on the coil
|
|
continuously. About three o'clock in the morning during a cold winter
|
|
night he heard a new sound - the breathing (carrier) noise and a sort
|
|
of regular ticking. He later found out that it was the new
|
|
broadcasting station in Vienna, Austria, which transmitted the sound
|
|
of a metronome throughout the night. This would have been about 1926.
|
|
|
|
I asked Takis about school. "In spite of the late nights
|
|
listening I never missed a day at school. My father was the Chairman
|
|
of the School Committee and I couldn't let him down. But I had to earn
|
|
some pocket money to pay for the bits a pieces I needed. Particularly
|
|
a decent pair of headphones; I had to hold the army headphone to me
|
|
ear with one hand which gave me pins and needles. For some years I
|
|
had kept goldfish and pigeons, so I sold them. A friend of mine had
|
|
gone to sea as a cadet and his ship went abroad, so I asked him to get
|
|
me a pair of headphones.
|
|
|
|
"I must explain to you that it was no easy matter for a Russian
|
|
seaman to serve on a vessel which visited foreign ports. First one
|
|
had to go through the Communist Party sieve and then he was told that
|
|
if he jumped ship his family would suffer for it.
|
|
|
|
"Anyway, he bought me a lovely pair of Telefunken headphones when
|
|
the ship berthed at Constantinople (Istanbul) which I have to this
|
|
day. But not on his first trip, when he was not allowed to go ashore.
|
|
And it was not the captain who decided who could go ashore. A trusted
|
|
member of the Party would pick out a group of seamen who could land
|
|
but they had to stay together the whole time.
|
|
|
|
"I never managed to go abroad. At the Club I had obtained a morse
|
|
test certificate for 40 letters a minute (8 wpm) in Latin characters
|
|
and 90 letters (18 wpm) in the Cyrillic alphabet (Russian). To go
|
|
abroad one had to up-grade to 80 Latin and 120 Cyrillic letters. (16
|
|
& 24 wpm). I was put on a small coastal ice-breaker which cleared the
|
|
river estuaries in the Black Sea.
|
|
|
|
"The Black Sea is one of the most treacherous inland seas in the
|
|
world. During the winter its northern shores are frozen whereas the
|
|
coast of Asia Minor keeps the southern shores relatively warm by
|
|
comparison. This results in gale force winds and rough seas. Waves
|
|
follow each other very closely as opposed to the long swell one gets
|
|
in the Pacific. Ships have to leave port to avoid crashing into each
|
|
other.
|
|
|
|
"I was about 18 when I first went to sea as a cadet W/T operator.
|
|
One day when we came out of an estuary the sea was so rough that the
|
|
captain decided to turn back. As we turned to starboard we noticed an
|
|
American freighter behind us heavily laden with wheat and very low
|
|
down in the water. To our horror it was caught between the crests of
|
|
two enormous waves and broke in two roughly amidships. Although we
|
|
were only about half a mile away the freighter sank before we could
|
|
get to it. We saw a few survivors in the water, but it would have
|
|
been impossible to put a boat into that treacherous sea. Apart from
|
|
which a man cannot survive many minutes in a water temperature just
|
|
above freezing. It was all over in a flash and we returned to Odessa
|
|
in deep shock.
|
|
|
|
"Odessa used to have four harbours. The callsign of the W/T
|
|
station was EU5KAO. I remember it very well because it was my job to
|
|
take the weather forecasts for shipping which it transmitted
|
|
regularly."
|
|
|
|
Takis spoke about some amusing misconceptions of that period.
|
|
When he first completed his receiver and was getting poor results with
|
|
it he asked a more experienced amateur to look at it. The 'expert'
|
|
immediately found the first fault: the downlead from the antenna had a
|
|
bend in it of more than 45 degrees which was quite unacceptable.
|
|
Secondly, the ground connection to the central heating radiator was no
|
|
good because it was winter and the radiator was hot so it presented a
|
|
very high resistance! It must be soldered, he said, to a cold water
|
|
tap.
|
|
|
|
"I tried everything I could think of to solder the wire to the
|
|
tap, but to no avail. Then one day I had a brain-wave and I made a
|
|
stupendous invention! I wrapped a copper strip round the tap and
|
|
bolted it tightly, together with the ground wire. I was really very
|
|
proud of myself and wondered if anybody else had ever thought of doing
|
|
it that way."
|
|
|
|
I asked Takis if he had done any transmitting from home. "We
|
|
amateurs of foreign origin were not allowed to own transmitters but we
|
|
could operate the club station under close supervision by the Party
|
|
member who was always present. My own SWL callsign was RK-1136 as you
|
|
can see from the QSL card I received from EU5DN in 1929.
|
|
|
|
"I remember our excitement when we first contacted a station
|
|
outside Russia. It was a station in Saarbrueken and we were on a
|
|
wavelength of 42 metres. All the members of the Club sent him our SWL
|
|
reports and he sent us back his cards and a photograph of his
|
|
equipment which was published in the Moscow amateur journal and so
|
|
Odessa became famous. On 42 metres most of our QSOs were with German
|
|
stations. As a result of this success many young lads joined our club
|
|
and we 'experts' would explain to them about bends in the aerial
|
|
down-lead and the high resistance of a ground connection to a central
|
|
heating radiator when the water in it was hot!!
|
|
|
|
The club transmitter consisted of 4 valves in a Hartley parallel
|
|
push-pull oscillator circuit which we considered to be of relative
|
|
'high power' - perhaps all of 10 watts."
|
|
|
|
Takis continued: "In 1930, my family, like many other families of
|
|
Greek origin, moved to Athens. I built a cw transmitter using four
|
|
Philips valves. I went and saw Mr Eleftheriou at the Ministry and he
|
|
informed me that there was no way that he could issue me with a
|
|
transmitting licence, but he thanked me all the same for telling him I
|
|
had built a transmitter."
|
|
|
|
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 basement 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 ship 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 ship
|
|
which was not even in sight of the shore? 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 entitled 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 assignment. 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 ship to shore 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
|
|
Bassiacos, 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 Embassy, 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 cassettes 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 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.
|
|
|
|
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 dictatorship). 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
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Greece before World War II was 'Bill' SV1KE. He was active on 20 and
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10 metres on AM phone and CW, using his famous McElroy 'bug' to good
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advantage. (No electronic keyers and no 15 metre band in those
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years).
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Tavaniotis was born in Rostov, USSR, of Greek parents. His father
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was a well-known doctor. Like many other Greek families Bill and his
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parents left Russia in the early years of the Communist regime and
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moved to Istanbul, Turkey, where he began his studies at the famous
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Robert College. Later he went to London where he first came into
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contact with radio amateurs, while studying Electrical Engineering.
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After that he went to Belgium.
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Bill had a knack of picking up languages and when I met him in
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Athens in the early thirties he spoke at least seven to my knowledge:
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Russian, Greek, English, French, Italian, Turkish and German. His
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pronunciation in all them was excellent. On one occasion at a party
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in the Athens suburb of Palaio Psyhico one of the guests was an
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amateur from Italy who spoke no English, so Bill interpreted from that
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language into Italian for his benefit. He then translated what the
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Italian had said into English for the others. But suddenly their
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faces went blank. Quite unconsciously Bill had translated the
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Italian's remarks into Turkish! Many years later Bill was employed at
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the United Nations in New York as a simultaneous translator. In
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October 1946 Bill and his wife Artemis visited Charles Mellen W1FH in
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Boston for an 'eyeball' after more than ten years of QSOs over the
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air, with the exception of the war years of course. Chas photographed
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Bill outside the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Bill
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photographed Mary (Chas' xyl), Chas and Artemis standing in front of
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the W1FH tower.
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The first transmitter he built can be seen in the photo taken from
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the book GREEK BROADCASTING published by Radio Karayianni in 1952.
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His shack was in the basement workshop at 17a, Bucharest Street in
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Athens, an address which became known world-wide as the first QSL
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bureau for Greece.
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The gang of enthusiasts who met at Bill's included Nasos Coucoulis
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SV1SM, Aghis Cazazis SV1CA, Nick Katselis SV1NK, Mikes Paidousi SV1MP,
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Pol Psomiadis SV1AZ (now N2DOE) and the writer of these memoirs,
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SV1RX. Of course all visiting amateurs made a beeline for the shack
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in the basement. As most of our contacts were with the U.S.A. we
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were usually up most of the night because of the 7-hour difference
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with Eastern Standard Time. None of us had motor-cars and public
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transport was not available during the night hours so we all got
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plenty of exercise walking back to our respective houses.
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Bill was closely in touch with two men who played a very important
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role in the development of amateur radio in Greece. I am referring to
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Stefanos Eleftheriou who was Section Head for Telecommunications at
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the Ministry (Greek initials T.T.T.)., and to Captain Kyriakos
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Pezopoulos, Director of D.R.Y.N. (Greek initials for Directorate of
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the Wireless Service of the Navy). The long wave spark transmitter at
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Votanikos, a suburb of Athens, (callsign SXA) had been built by the
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Marconi company before World
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(Bill Tavaniotis died of cancer in 1948.)
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4. Harry Barnett G2AIQ (formerly SV1WE).
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In July 1946, Harry Barnett, a Royal Air Force officer attached to
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the Press Department of the British Embassy in Athens obtained an
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experimental transmitting licence from the W/T section of the Ministry
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of Posts & Telegraphs, with the callsign SV1WE. At that time he was
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living in a flat in Athens and could not put up an antenna, so it was
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not until June 1947 that he became active.
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The terms of his licence were in themselves rather strange, one
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might even say quite 'experimental', the final paragraph reading:
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"This experimental research must be carried out as
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follows:-
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1. With a maximum power of 50 watts.
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2. In the frequency bands (harmonics) 130, 260, 520 Mc/s.
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3. In the frequency bands 28 Mc/s and 56 Mc/s.
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4. With the call sign SV1WE."
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From June 1947 until April 1948 Harry worked 61 countries, mostly
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on phone in the 10 & 20 metre bands, at a time when there were not
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many stations on the air - a minute fraction of the millions now
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active.
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He used a National HRO receiver he had got off a scrap heap which
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he modified to take the efficient EF50 valves in the R.F. stages and
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EF39s in the I.F.
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The transmitter was completely 'home brew', consisting of a metal
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6L6 Franklin oscillator on 3.5 MHz followed by two more 6L6s doubling
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to 14 MHz. In the final amplifier stage Harry used a Telefunken
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pentode, the famous and very efficient RL12P35 which was used in the
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German tank transmitters in all stages, oscillator, P.A. and audio
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amplifier/suppressor grid modulator. He adopted the same method of
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modulation using a record player amplifier and an Astatic crystal
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microphone.
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W.A.C. was achieved by February 1948 with about 50 watts of R.F.
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into a simple dipole antenna. During the ten months that SV1WE was
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active 750 QSL cards were sent out. Of the 61 countries worked only 49
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were confirmed.
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Today (1989) Harry is still regularly on the air under his
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original callsign G2AIQ which was first issued to him on the 1st of
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January 1938, 51 years ago.
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5. George Yiapapas (formerly SV1GY).
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George Yiapapas is a Greek amateur who was very active for over
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25 years yet nobody seems to have heard of him. In 1935 George and
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his father Costas built a one-valve transmitter using a type 59
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pentode with suppressor grid modulation, and succeeded in contacting
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most of the world with this QRP rig. The electron coupled oscillator
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could not have put more than 4 or 5 watts into the antenna.
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After the war George went to Jordan in 1956 to work for Cable &
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Wireless the English company which operated the old Eastern Telegraph
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cable network. He used the callsign JY1GY for about a year and was
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then transferred to Tripoli in the Kingdom of Lybia, during the reign
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of King Idris, where he obtained an official licence with the call
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5A3TA.
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In 1960 he was again transferred, this time to Kuwait, where he
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operated the equipment of Mohamet Behbehani 9K2AM for over six years.
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George now has a small shop in Piraeus, the port of Athens and is no
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longer active on the amateur bands.
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6. Stefanos Eleftheriou (1895-1979).
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Stefanos Eleftheriou, Head of the Telecommmunications section of
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the Ministry of Posts & Telegraphs (Greek initials T.T.T.) played a
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vital role in the early development of amateur radio in Greece.
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When he returned from Switzerland, where he had studied Electrical
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Engineering, he had to do his compulsory military service which had
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been deferred while he was completing his education. A friend of his
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told him "Don't go into the Army, join the Navy; they have an amazing
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wireless station at Votanikos with which they can contact the Fleet
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anywhere in the world". As it happened there was a vacancy for an
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officer and Stefanos together with another young man called Nikolis
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faced a Selection Board of naval officers who really didn't know what
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qualifications they were looking for. He was successful whereas
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Nikolis went to the Ministry of Posts & Telegraphs where he ended up
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as Director-General many years later.
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The MARCONI COMPANY of England had built an impressive wireless
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station for the Greek Royal Navy at Votanikos, a suburb of Athens.
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There was a transmitter which operated on 600 metres and a larger one
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on long waves above 2,000 metres which used the callsign SXA.
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Stefanos told me how he was summoned by the Director of the Naval
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Station Admiral Mezeviris who asked him "Tell me, young man, what do
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you know about wireless?"
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"Well sir", replied Eleftheriou, "I studied Electrical Engineering
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in Switzerland - I really don't anything about wireless."
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"Neither do I", replied the Admiral candidly. "Nor do most of my
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officers. We must set up a school to train technicians and wireless
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operators. I entrust you with the task of getting all the necessary
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books and other materials. Write to England, the U.S.A., France and
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Germany and get whatever you need. When you are ready I will appoint
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staff to assist you." That was how Eleftheriou became the head of the
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first school for training wireless officers for the Greek Royal Navy.
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A couple of years later Eleftheriou joined the staff of the
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Ministry of Post & Telegraphs. A newspaper of 1930 had a photograph
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of him with one of his triplet sons.
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In his capacity of Head of the Telecommunications Section at the
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Ministry he worked hard to get official recognition of amateur radio.
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A handful of us who were active 'under cover' so to speak, frequently
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visited him in his office. He was a very likeable person and had a
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talent for anecdotes. One day he told us that he had attended a Joint
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Services Committee which had been set up to study the requirements for
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building a broadcasting station in Athens. A station had been in
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regular operation in the northern city of Thessaloniki (Salonica)
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since 1928, built by the pioneer of Broadcasting in the Balkans
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Christos Tsingeridis.
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When the question of wavelength for the proposed station was
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|
considered somebody said a wavelength of 2,000 metres might be
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appropriate. One of the military officers, who shall be nameless,
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|
remarked angrily "What! 2,000 metres. We are spending all this
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|
money only to be received up to Koukouvaounes? This is outrageous!"
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|
(Koukouvaounes was then a small village with a funny name about 3
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|
miles south-west of Athens.
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Eleftheriou lived to the ripe old age of 84. When I last saw him
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he promised to give me his collection of old photographs and a large
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number of books and documents relating to the development of radio
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communications in Greece. Unfortunately, shortly after his death his
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wife and three sons moved house temporarily and a packing case
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containing all these priceless papers was lost in
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7. Norman F.Joly G3FNJ. (Formerly SV1RX).
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I was born in Izmir (then known as Smyrna), on the west coast of
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Turkey in Asia Minor, in 1911, of British parents. My British
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nationality was established through the Treaty of Capitulation which
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|
was then in force between Turkey and the United Kingdom of Great
|
|
Britain and Northern Ireland. I remember there was a British Post
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|
Office in Smyrna and we posted our letters with British postage stamps
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(of King Edward VII) overprinted with the word LEVANT.
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My grandmother on my father's side had come from Russia. It is a
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strange coincidence that Takis Coumbias (ex SV1AAA), Bill Tavaniotis
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(ex SV1KE) and I all had roots in southern Russia. My grandmother on
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my mother's side was the daughter of the Dutch consul in Smyrna. Quite
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a mixed bag.
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In 1922, at the end of the war between Turkey and Greece, the town
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|
of Smyrna was destroyed by fire when the Greek army was routed. My
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|
widowed mother with four young children, was advised to take us on
|
|
board a British merchant vessel while the town changed hands. We were
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|
told to take a little food with us just for a day or two. We carried
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|
a large string bag with some bread, cheese and fruit, and one knife,
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|
one fork and one spoon between the five of us. I remember it was night
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|
and my mother put all her jewelry in a small leather bag. As I
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|
pulled the cord to close it the pin of a large broach stuck out
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|
through the top. My mother grabbed it and said I would hurt myself - I
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|
was only 11 years old at the time. She looked around the bedroom,
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|
lifted up a corner of the mattress of her bed and hid the pouch
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|
`safely' underneath it. We hurried out of the house - and never went
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|
back.
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We and many other families spent one night on the merchant vessel
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|
where there was no sleeping accommodation. Next morning we were
|
|
transferred to a large hospital ship called MAINE. All day we watched
|
|
small groups of the Turkish and Greek armies skirmishing on the
|
|
sea-front and in the evening many fires broke out in the town. In the
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|
middle of the night while we were sleeping the hospital ship sailed
|
|
away to an unknown destination. After two or three days we arrived in
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|
Malta, where most of us stayed for the next four years.
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It was in Malta that my interest in wireless telegraphy was first
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|
aroused. We were housed in some military `married quarters'. Close
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|
by there was a wireless station which produced bright greenish-blue
|
|
sparks and crackling noises. Its antennas were supported on three
|
|
very tall wooden masts painted bright yellow. I soon discovered that
|
|
it was GYZ belonging to the Admiralty. Malta was then (1922) a very
|
|
big base of the British Navy, in the good old days when England had an
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|
Empire.
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I bought a kit of parts and assembled a small receiver and being
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|
so close to the powerful spark transmitter that was all I ever heard.
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In 1926 when I left school my family moved to Greece and my
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|
brother who was 7 years older than me, opened up a shipping office on
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the island of Mitylene, in the Aegean sea. My father and grandfather
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|
had been in this business in Turkey.
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It was in Mitylene in 1927 that I constructed my first short wave
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receiver. It had 3 valves with 4 volt filaments, heated by an
|
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accumulator (storage battery). H.T of 130 volts was obtained from a
|
|
bank of small accumulators in series. As I had not learned how to make
|
|
a charger I had to carry these two units to a local garage regularly
|
|
for re-charging.
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Apart from commercial telegraph stations there was little else to
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|
hear. I had still not heard about `amateur' radio. The B.B.C. was
|
|
carrying out test transmissions from Chelmsford for what became the
|
|
Empire Service (now the World Service) using the callsign G5SW. There
|
|
was also G6RX which stood for Rugby Experimental, operated by the
|
|
British Post Office. They were experimenting with ship-to-shore
|
|
telephony, and after setting up a circuit the operator used to say
|
|
"over to condition A" (and sometimes B) which was very frustrating for
|
|
me because the voices then became scrambled and quite unintelligible.
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|
When I first began transmitting six years later, having `discovered'
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the amateurs, I chose the callsign RX as I had been a listener so
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long, and also remembering the excitement of listening to G6RX.
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In 1930 I moved to Athens and became a salesman for RCA radios. It
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was there that I met Bill Tavaniotis, SV1KE, and his mechanic Pol
|
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SV1AZ (now N2DOE). None of us had official licences because the Greek
|
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State did not recognise the existence of amateur radio, and in fact
|
|
Athens did not even have a broadcasting station until 1938, although a
|
|
station had been operating since 1928 in Salonica (Thessaloniki) the
|
|
second largest city of Greece. But the Head of the W/T section at the
|
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Ministry of Posts & Telegraphs (Greek initials T.T.T) Mr Stefanos
|
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Eleftheriou knew all about us and gave us his unofficial blessing.
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My first transmitter was just an electron coupled oscillator using
|
|
a type 59 output pentode from a radio. With an input of around 5
|
|
watts I was able to achieve W.A.C. on 14 MHz in 25 minutes one very
|
|
exciting afternoon. There were very few stations around and single
|
|
frequency working had not been heard of yet. It was the middle of the
|
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sunspot cycle (which I knew nothing of) and propagation must have been
|
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exceptionally good.
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Another thing we had never heard of in those innocent days was
|
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SWR. I had a Hot Wire ammeter and always tuned for maximum
|
|
deflection, completely oblivious of the fact that a large proportion
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of the indicated value was `reflected power'. I moved to `high power'
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when I added a 210 P.A. to my rig.
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Obviously the prefix SV was quite a rare one and SV stations were
|
|
much sought after, particularly the handful who used CW. But as I
|
|
described in a short article in the October 1948 issue of the SHORT
|
|
WAVE MAGAZINE published in London, it was not all fun being a rare DX
|
|
station. A photo copy appears below:
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To return to pre-World War II operating: Most operators used
|
|
crystal oscillators in order to have a clean `9x' note. It was quite
|
|
normal procedure to call CQ on one's crystal frequency, say 14,076 KHz
|
|
and then go over and start combing the band from 14,000 for replies.
|
|
At that time 20 metres covered 14,000 to 14,400 KHz., and the 15 metre
|
|
band had not been allocated to the amateur service.
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In September 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and all of us hastily and
|
|
voluntarily dismantled our transmitters and scattered the components,
|
|
as there was nobody to order us to close down.
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In the latter part of April 1941 the German army marched into the
|
|
northern suburbs of Athens at 11 o'clock in the morning. At 3 o'clock
|
|
in the afternoon of the same day, a strong unit of the Gestapo arrived
|
|
in the southern suburb of Kallithea and surrounded the block in which
|
|
my house was situated and broke into it, looking for me and my
|
|
transmitter. Of course I had dismantled everything 19 months
|
|
previously and even taken down the antenna. So after this long period
|
|
of QRT how did they know where to find me? Well, FOUR YEARS EARLIER I
|
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had won the first prize for Greece in the D.A.S.D. DX Contest for
|
|
1937 and the German society had sent me a nice certificate. You can
|
|
draw your own conclusions. I heard later (because I had left a few
|
|
days earlier for Egypt with the staff of the British Embassy) that the
|
|
Gestapo had visited all the active amateurs and had managed to arrest
|
|
only one of them, Nasos Coucoulis SV1SM (later SV1AC) and put him in a
|
|
concentration camp in Italy for nearly a year.
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I would like to sketch briefly the turbulent events of the
|
|
following three years with some extracts from my diaries.
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One year earlier, in 1940, following the invasion of Greece by the
|
|
Italian army operating from Albania, the broadcasting authority in
|
|
Athens (ETHNIKON IDRIMA RADIOFONIAS) began a news service in English
|
|
which was beamed to England and the U.S.A. on the short waves. In my
|
|
capacity as a member of the Press Department staff of the British
|
|
Embassy I took part in the first programme, and in fact read the first
|
|
news bulletin, which went out at 3 a.m. Athens time. As I said
|
|
above, early in April I was transferred to the British Embassy in
|
|
Cairo, Egypt.
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|
|
1941: Very small contingents of the British army landed in Greece
|
|
to help the Greek army. But they proved totally incapable of standing
|
|
up to the onslaught of the German army which followed soon after. The
|
|
Greek army laid down its arms in Epirus (north-western Greece).
|
|
General Tsolakoglou became the first 'Quisling' Prime Minister of
|
|
Greece. King George and his government, under Premier Emmanouil
|
|
Tsouderos had left for Cairo.
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|
1942: In North Africa General Rommel had advanced to within 100
|
|
miles of Cairo, but his supply lines had become very long. One of the
|
|
most important was the railway link through Greece, so the British
|
|
strategists decided that attempts must be made to disrupt it. The
|
|
Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.) in London, despatched two small
|
|
groups of saboteurs (about a dozen men altogether) under the command
|
|
of Brigadier Eddie Myers and Major Chris Woodhouse who had the task of
|
|
linking up with the various bands of `Andartes' (Resistance movement
|
|
fighters) which had started forming in the mountains.
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|
Unfortunately, the British officers were told nothing at all about
|
|
the bitter rivalries between the various groups, most probably because
|
|
H.Q. in Cairo were themselves ignorant about the real situation. It
|
|
didn't take Meyers and Woodhouse long to discover that by far the
|
|
largest group was E.L.A.S. (the Popular Liberation Army) under Aris
|
|
Velouhiotis, about 120 ill-equipped men operating in the Pindus
|
|
mountains. Another smaller group of about 60 men had rallied round a
|
|
regular officer of the Greek army, Colonel Napoleon Zervas. They
|
|
called themselves the National Republican Greek League (Greek initials
|
|
E.D.E.S.)
|
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|
|
I met Zervas personally years later when he was Minister of the
|
|
Interior (and therefore responsible for the Police). I was then
|
|
acting as interpreter for the Assistant-Head of the British Police
|
|
Mission to Greece. I remember vividly with what relish he described
|
|
to Colonel Prosser his method of torturing E.L.A.S. prisoners, which
|
|
left no physical marks on any part of the body.
|
|
|
|
It was in the course of a secret visit to Athens that young Chris
|
|
Woodhouse found out the real chain of command, when he was introduced
|
|
to George Siantos, the Secretary of the Greek Communist Party (Greek
|
|
initials K.K.E.). The K.K.E. controlled E.A.M., the National
|
|
Liberation Front which, in turn, ran E.L.A.S. But with a title like
|
|
that (National Liberation Front) it was easy to see why E.A.M.
|
|
enjoyed such widespread support, not only in the countryside, but also
|
|
among the intelligentsia in Athens.
|
|
|
|
But the task of the S.O.E. officers was made very difficult for
|
|
various reasons: Winston Churchill had given orders that they were to
|
|
support, as far as possible, only those guerrilla leaders who favoured
|
|
the King - but there were none, or very few. The S.O.E. units had
|
|
orders to cause the maximum disruption to the German occupation of the
|
|
country. And that was impossible without the support of E.L.A.S.,
|
|
which was controlled by the Communists. At the outset, it became
|
|
obvious to the S.O.E. officers that military and political priorities
|
|
were already in conflict.
|
|
|
|
E.L.A.S. forces were getting stronger every day and very soon they
|
|
began attacking fellow Greeks in non-communist Andarte units. The
|
|
successful attack on the railway bridge over the Gorgopotamos river on
|
|
the 26th of November was the first and last time that ELAS and EDES
|
|
co-operated against the common enemy under the coercion and technical
|
|
guidance of the British.
|
|
|
|
1943: Friction between EDES and ELAS continued to increase. When
|
|
Eddie Myers told them that he had been instructed to destroy the
|
|
bridge over the Asopos river, ELAS said it was too dangerous a target
|
|
and refused to help, so this became an all-British operation. A
|
|
24-year-old demolition expert of the Royal Engineers Captain Ken
|
|
Scott, was sent from Cairo. He was dropped by parachute, and planned
|
|
the successful attack on the bridge. It took the Germans four months
|
|
to rebuild it.
|
|
|
|
On the 11th of September 14,000 Italian troops in the north-west
|
|
surrendered to the Andartes with all their arms. A month later ELAS
|
|
seized the weapons and attacked EDES. The civil war had begun.
|
|
|
|
1944: The friction between the various groups of the Resistance
|
|
movement erupted into full-scale war, described as the 'civil war' or
|
|
the 'guerrilla war' depending on whose side you were on. ELAS were
|
|
determined that they alone would be in control when the Allies
|
|
arrived. As a result of intense negotiations on the part of the
|
|
British officers, all the Andarte leaders signed an Armistice document
|
|
on the 29th February 1944 agreeing to stop fighting each other and to
|
|
concentrate all their efforts against the common enemy - the Germans.
|
|
Unfortunately, barely a month later ELAS attacked and completely
|
|
annihilated the smallest andarte group E.K.K.A. Now only EDES and the
|
|
200-strong S.O.E. force stood between the 40,000 ELAS Communists and
|
|
total control of the Greek countryside.
|
|
|
|
In the Middle East, the Lebanon Conference, attended by delegates
|
|
from all parties, including representatives of the Andartes, elected
|
|
George Papandreou (father of Andreas Papandreou, recently Prime
|
|
Minister of Greece), to act as Prime Minister of the Government of
|
|
National Unity in exile. In September the government moved
|
|
temporarily to Italy. In October, following the withdrawal of the
|
|
Germans from Athens, British troops began landing in Greece from Greek
|
|
and British warships. By far the largest contingent landed near the
|
|
port of Piraeus and tens of thousands of Greeks turned out to cheer
|
|
and welcome the British forces as they marched through the streets.
|
|
|
|
On October 18 the members of the Greek government returned to
|
|
Athens under the leadership of the Premier George Papandreou, who was
|
|
accompanied by Lt. General Ronald Scobie, the Allied military
|
|
commander.
|
|
|
|
Sadly though, in December ELAS marched on Athens. The British
|
|
troops, so recently feted and garlanded now found themselves fighting
|
|
on the same streets of their earlier welcome. S.O.E. had been warning
|
|
Cairo for two years that this might happen. After three or four weeks
|
|
of intense fighting in the streets of Athens and in the suburbs, ELAS
|
|
withdrew.
|
|
|
|
Winston Churchill came to Athens on Christmas Day to mediate. A
|
|
couple of ELAS snipers hiding in a school a few hundred yards away
|
|
from the British Embassy took a few pot shots at him as he got out of
|
|
an armoured vehicle which had brought him from the airport. Next day,
|
|
when he attended a meeting of all parties, the ELAS representative
|
|
walked in wearing a military-style uniform with crossed bandoleers
|
|
across his chest, and carrying two pistols. Churchill turned to his
|
|
interpreter and said quietly: "Tell him to leave his toys outside, or
|
|
I fly back to London immediately, to spend Christmas properly with my
|
|
family."
|
|
|
|
1945: On the 1st of January Archbishop Damaskinos was appointed
|
|
Regent. (It had been agreed that the King should not return to Greece
|
|
until his position had been clarified by a plebiscite). Plastiras
|
|
replaced Papandreou as Prime Minister. After the Varkiza agreement
|
|
the guerrilla war (or civil war) was officially brought to an end.
|
|
|
|
Years later in a broadcast, Chris Woodhouse summarised what the
|
|
S.O.E. mission to Greece had achieved.
|
|
|
|
1. It had provided the technical expertise, such as the
|
|
handling of explosives, without which the major sabotage successes
|
|
would have been impossible.
|
|
|
|
2. It had provided the tactical planning and supplied the
|
|
communications which successfully harnessed the courage of the Greeks
|
|
to the strategic requirements of the Allied commanders.
|
|
|
|
3. Most important of all, in the long run, it assured that
|
|
no armed force in occupied Greece would gain a monopoly of power on
|
|
the day of liberation. The final aim of the mission was to leave the
|
|
Greeks with a free choice at the end of the war - a choice between a
|
|
Monarchy, a Republic or even a Communist regime if they wanted it.
|
|
But the recent dramatic events in the closing months of 1989 in
|
|
Poland, the U.S.S.R., Hungary, the East German Democratic Republic,
|
|
Czechoslovakia and finally Romania have proved that the last choice
|
|
would have been an unwise one if the Greeks had also opted for
|
|
Communism.
|
|
|
|
1946: Following a plebiscite King George II returned to Greece at
|
|
the end of September and appointed Panayis Tsaldaris as his Prime
|
|
Minister.
|
|
|
|
When I returned to Athens in October 1944 on H.H.M.S. AVEROF I
|
|
had been appointed Radio Monitoring Officer of the Anglo-Greek
|
|
Information Service (A.G.I.S.) with a staff of about 25 W/T operators
|
|
and typists to assist me. My unit was a section of the Press
|
|
Department of the British Embassy. I think the choice of title was a
|
|
rather unfortunate mistake. The English words `information' and
|
|
`intelligence' have only one equivalent word in Greek pliroforiesq.
|
|
And most Greeks hold peculiar views about the C.I.A. and the British
|
|
Intelligence Service. So here I was strutting about in the uniform of
|
|
a war correspondent bearing the flashes `I.S.', the butt of many a
|
|
joke from my friends who accused me of being a master spy. My boss,
|
|
Colonel Johnson, who had been the British Council representative in
|
|
Greece prior to the outbreak of war in 1939, came to my office one
|
|
morning and told me that he had heard a rumour that King George of the
|
|
Hellenes, who was then in London, was going to broadcast in the Greek
|
|
service of the B.B.C. I replied I had heard nothing, but would try
|
|
and find out if the rumour was true. As he left my office I glanced
|
|
at my watch; it was 11 o'clock in the morning, 9 o'clock in London. I
|
|
telephoned the General Manager of Cable & Wireless, Mr Briggs, who was
|
|
a personal friend. I told him I wanted to make use of his facilities
|
|
to ask an urgent question of the B.B.C. in London. He replied, "Tell
|
|
McTaggert" (the engineer in charge of the Central Telegraph Office)
|
|
"that I said he should help you in any way possible."
|
|
|
|
"Mac", I said over the telephone, "would you get one of your
|
|
operators to ring the B.B.C. in Bush House (from where the World
|
|
Service originates) and ask them if they have any plans for a
|
|
broadcast by King George of the Hellenes." I immediately tuned one of
|
|
my receivers to the frequency of the London telegraph link, which was
|
|
carrying high speed morse traffic. In a short while the tape was
|
|
stopped and an operator, using a hand key, asked my question slowly in
|
|
plain language, and then the tape was put on again. I waited anxiously
|
|
for about five minutes. Again the tape was stopped, a single letter
|
|
`R' (for received) was sent by hand, and traffic returned to
|
|
normal. My telephone rang; it was McTaggert. "Nothing doing, old
|
|
boy. The B.B.C. have no plans for such a broadcast." I thanked him
|
|
and looked at my watch. It was 11.25, just 25 minutes had elapsed. I
|
|
called my boss and told him the answer to his question. "How do you
|
|
know?", he asked. "I asked the B.B.C., sir." "You what?", he shouted
|
|
at me. "Don't you know there's a war on? I'm coming to see you." He
|
|
stormed into my office and demanded an explanation, so I told him what
|
|
I had done. "Good God, what is this going to cost us?". "Nothing at
|
|
all, sir. There is no provision for anything like that in the
|
|
operating procedure". "Then I must write a letter to Cable & Wireless
|
|
to thank them." I thought to myself, why don't you write a letter to
|
|
Norman and thank him for having friends in the right places. But I
|
|
kept my mouth shut.
|
|
|
|
My equipment and my staff of 20 men and 5 girls were housed on the
|
|
6th floor of the Metohikon Tamion building. When ELAS marched on
|
|
Athens, there was constant firing, shelling and bombing throughout the
|
|
24 hours of the day and night for three or four weeks. The bombing was
|
|
by light aircraft of the R.A.F. on the ELAS positions in the suburbs
|
|
and Beaufighter aircraft straffing them with 20 mm cannon. Then ELAS
|
|
set up a 75 mm gun in the northern suburb of Aharnon, and started
|
|
hitting us back. When we had received several hits on and around our
|
|
H.Q. building, I was ordered to move down to the second floor, to
|
|
safer accommodation. I extended some of my antenna down-leads, and
|
|
resumed normal service. One of our assignments was to transcribe,
|
|
every day, what was said in the Greek transmissions of nineteen
|
|
different countries about the situation in Greece, and to produce a
|
|
daily summary in English, for the benefit of the Press Department.
|
|
|
|
In the summer of 1945 we began having interference on GIN, a
|
|
station of the British Post Office which operated around 10MHz,
|
|
transmitting a REUTER news service for Europe on the German
|
|
Hellschreiber (Hell printer) system. This was a sort of very course
|
|
TV picture of 49 dots, seven by seven. The letter 'I' for instance
|
|
came out as seven dots vertically, and the letter 'T' just had another
|
|
six dots across the top. The letters were very crude but readable,
|
|
provided there was no interference, or crashes of static. The
|
|
interference, which made our tape quite unreadable, used to start
|
|
around 3 in the afternoon and fade slowly away about three hours
|
|
later, when the tape became readable again. I decided I would try and
|
|
identify the source. All I had in the way of recorders were
|
|
office-type Dictaphones using wax cylinders. I removed the three
|
|
weights from the speed governor, and the cylinder spun round like mad.
|
|
I managed to record for about three minutes and when I played the
|
|
recording on another machine at normal speed the cylinder yielded up
|
|
its secret - it was high speed morse traffic in 5-figure cypher. I
|
|
typed it all out and noticed that some of the paragraphs began with
|
|
the letter `B'. I subsequently found out it was a
|
|
characteristic of stations carrying Royal Air Force traffic. I sent
|
|
my text to London, and three weeks later the interference stopped. It
|
|
was more than a month later that I was told what had happened. The
|
|
transmitter causing the problem was located in Kandy, Ceylon. It
|
|
operated with a rhombic antenna beamed to R.A.F. Calcutta. Its
|
|
frequency was only 500 Hz away from GIN. The department which had
|
|
allocated the frequency never imagined that it could possibly cause
|
|
interference in Europe to the REUTER news service. But sunspot cycle
|
|
20, which was a good one, had decided otherwise.
|
|
|
|
In 1947 I was transferred to the British Police Mission to Greece,
|
|
which was headed by Sir Charles Wickham. My principal duty was to
|
|
interpret for Sir Charles, and for his second in command Colonel
|
|
Prosser. My friend Mr Eleftheriou at the Ministry issued me with a
|
|
special licence and I came on the air again using my pre-war callsign
|
|
SV1RX. When the Police Mission closed down in 1948 I came to England
|
|
and got the callsign G3FNJ which I have now held for over 41 years.
|
|
|
|
8. Wartime Broadcasts from Cairo.
|
|
|
|
Elias Eliascos, a former teacher of English at Athens College (a
|
|
joint U.S./Greek institution) described to me how he came to be a
|
|
news-reader at Radio Cairo in 1941 together with his brother
|
|
Patroclos.
|
|
|
|
"When Hitler declared war on Greece and after the collapse of the
|
|
front in northern Greece and in Albania, my brother Patroclos and I
|
|
were summoned to the British Embassy in Athens and told that owing to
|
|
our close ties with the British Council (of Cultural Relations), it
|
|
would not be prudent for us to remain in Athens or even Greece after
|
|
the German army had occupied the capital. We were told that we would
|
|
be helped to leave Greece together with the British Embassy staff, the
|
|
staff of the British Council and all the British nationals in Greece.
|
|
|
|
"The British Consul-General provided us with the necessary
|
|
documents for my brother and me to board the last evacuation vessel
|
|
sailing from the port of Piraeus. It was the s/s 'Corinthia' which
|
|
left Piraeus on the 18th of April 1941. It happened to be Good Friday
|
|
according to the Greek-Orthodox calendar. About five days later
|
|
Hitler's army marched into Athens.
|
|
|
|
"The ship was packed and the British Embassy staff carried most of
|
|
the Embassy files with them. One of the passengers was David Balfour
|
|
who was the vicar of the little chapel attached to the Evangelismos
|
|
Hospital, an impressive tall figure of a man sporting a large black
|
|
beard. Although he had been ordained as a priest of the
|
|
Greek-Orthodox Church he was a British national and it was widely
|
|
rumoured that he was an agent of British Intelligence. His official
|
|
title was 'Father Dimitrios'. He was also the spiritual father of the
|
|
Greek Royal family. I refer to David Balfour because recently the
|
|
'ATHENIAN' which is the only English language magazine in Athens, in
|
|
its issue dated January 1988, published a feature article about him,
|
|
saying that even before the Germans had entered Athens he had shaved
|
|
off his beard and divested himself of his clerical robes.
|
|
|
|
"I can say quite categorically that this was not true. When the
|
|
'Corinthia' sailed he was still 'Father Dimitrios' and in fact he
|
|
officiated at a Resurrection service while we were still at sea. On
|
|
the voyage we carried out lifeboat drill on two occasions, once when
|
|
it was thought that there was a U-boat in the vicinity, and another
|
|
time when an aircraft flew overhead which turned out to be friendly.
|
|
I shall never forget how I was moved with emotion when I saw the women
|
|
getting into the boats, most of them carrying babies or children in
|
|
their arms, calmly singing hymns in low voices.
|
|
|
|
"Some time later I met David Balfour again in Cairo, and this time
|
|
he HAD shaved off his beard, and he was wearing the uniform of a Major
|
|
in the Intelligence Corps which is a regular unit of the British
|
|
army."
|
|
|
|
Eliascos said he would like to quote a little more from the
|
|
sensational article written by J.M. Thursby in the 'ATHENIAN'.
|
|
|
|
"Several years before war was even declared, the Abwehr (German
|
|
military intelligence), along with the Nazi civilian secret service,
|
|
had highly trained undercover agents operating in Greece. With
|
|
consummate skill they had catalogued all military and civil
|
|
information that could be useful to the Third Reich, and organised spy
|
|
rings throughout the country. As war became more and more inevitable,
|
|
it also became increasingly imperative that Britain and other
|
|
anti-fascist countries should gain specific and accurate knowledge of
|
|
these operations.
|
|
|
|
"During this period a monk, who had embraced the Orthodox faith in
|
|
Warsaw, arrived from Poland via Mount Athos, to join the monastery of
|
|
Pendeli, just outside Athens. According to his biographer John
|
|
Freeman, his registration at Pendeli reads,
|
|
|
|
Cell 102 Serial number 75
|
|
Secular name David Balfour
|
|
Ecclesiastic name Dimitri
|
|
Place of birth England
|
|
Age 35
|
|
Inscribed order of His Holiness the Archbishop of
|
|
Athens.
|
|
Coming from the Russian Church.
|
|
Archbishopric ordinance number 3197 of 9 May 1936."
|
|
|
|
"Father Dimitri was obviously a well-educated and very courteous
|
|
person. He had studied in various parts of Europe and spoke several
|
|
languages fluently. These included ancient, Byzantine and modern
|
|
Greek, not to mention colloquial 'mangika' (slang). When a vacancy
|
|
arose for a priest to serve the chapel at Evangelismos Hospital in
|
|
central Athens, who should be more suitable for this post in the heart
|
|
of the select neighbourhood of Kolonaki than the well-educated,
|
|
well-bred, charming and conscientious Father Dimitri."
|
|
|
|
(David Balfour died aged 86 on the 11th of October 1989.)
|
|
|
|
"Anyway, let me continue my story of the 'Corinthia trip",
|
|
Eliascos went on. "We celebrated Easter on board and when we arrived
|
|
at Alexandria some of us were sent on to Cairo and others went to
|
|
India. My brother and I presented ourselves at the offices of the
|
|
Press Department of the British Embassy in the Garden City. We were
|
|
received by the well-known Byzantine scholar Stephen Runciman who was
|
|
in charge of all foreign language broadcasts directed to Europe, that
|
|
is, the Balkans, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Poland and
|
|
several others. One of our colleagues was Lawrence Durrell who later
|
|
became the famous author of many successful books like the banned
|
|
'Black Book', 'Bitter Lemons', 'The Alexandria Quartet', 'Prospero's
|
|
Cell' and others. But at that time, he used to entertain us daily
|
|
with a fresh episode about his Aunt Agatha with the wooden leg."
|
|
|
|
Eliascos continued: "My brother Patroclos and I were told that we
|
|
would be attached to the section producing the broadcasts in Greek
|
|
directed towards occupied Greece, acting as translators, editors and
|
|
newsreaders. The Head of this section was George Haniotis the sports
|
|
editor of the Athens newspaper 'Elefthero Vima' who used to sign his
|
|
sporting articles 'GEO'. Under him was the well-known literary figure
|
|
of Dimitri Fotiadis, who died in October 1988.
|
|
|
|
"When the broadcasts began early in May 1941 I was the principal
|
|
newsreader. Later when Haniotis was posted to the Greek Embassy in
|
|
Washington D.C. as Press Attache, my brother was appointed Section
|
|
Head. At that time the Prime Minister of the Greek government in
|
|
exile was Emmanouil Tsouderos, a former Director of the Bank of
|
|
Greece. The foreign language broadcasts from Radio Cairo were under
|
|
the over-all control of the Political Warfare Executive (P.W.E.) of
|
|
the British Ministry of Information. Later, in conjunction with the
|
|
Americans, the title of the unit was changed to Psychological Warfare
|
|
Branch (P.W.B.)
|
|
|
|
"Every evening we had two broadcasts, at 7.30 and 10.30 pm, which
|
|
went out on the medium wave transmitter of Radio Cairo at Abu Zabal,
|
|
run by the E.S.B. (Egyptian State Broadcasting). The transmissions in
|
|
eleven foreign languages were also relayed by three short wave
|
|
transmitters, two belonging to the telegraph company Cable & Wireless
|
|
(callsigns SUV & SUW), and an experimental transmitter of 7.5
|
|
kilowatts belonging to a British army signals unit, with the odd
|
|
callsign JCJC, operated by young corporal Rowley Shears G8KW, a radio
|
|
amateur friend of Norman Joly.
|
|
|
|
"The Greek broadcasts began in May 1941 and went on to the end of
|
|
January 1945.
|
|
|
|
"During this period many important personalities broadcast from
|
|
Studio 3, which was also used by well-known war correspondents of the
|
|
B.B.C., the N.B.C. and many other news organisations. The people of
|
|
occupied Greece were addressed by Mr Tsouderos, Crown Prince Paul of
|
|
Greece, Sofoclis Venizelos, son of the famous Cretan politician
|
|
Eleftherios Venizelos who had played a leading role in the political
|
|
fortunes of modern Greece, and Panayiotis Kanellopoulos Minister for
|
|
War. After the naval mutiny in the port of Alexandria Admiral
|
|
Voulgaris spoke to the officers and naval ratings of the Greek Royal
|
|
Navy."
|
|
|
|
Eliascos described in detail the negotiations of the Lebanon
|
|
Conference which resulted in the appointment of George Papandreou
|
|
(father of Andreas Papandreou who was recently Prime Minister), as the
|
|
new Prime Minister of the Coalition government in exile. He can be
|
|
seen at the famous R.C.A velocity microphone type 44BX which was used
|
|
throughout World War II and many years after. This ribbon type
|
|
microphone had a very large and heavy permanent magnet embodied in the
|
|
design and must have weighed about 1,000 times more than a modern
|
|
electret lapel microphone.
|
|
|
|
"I must explain that these war-time broadcasts were carried out in
|
|
the presence of a Switch Censor who sat on the other side of the news
|
|
reader's desk and was able to turn off the microphone in a split
|
|
second if it ever became necessary. During the three and a half years
|
|
of the broadcasts this was done only on one special occasion and
|
|
certainly not because the newsreader had gone berserk or something like
|
|
that. The Chief Censor was Professor Eric Sloman who had been the
|
|
first Director of the Police Academy in Kerkyra (Corfu). Then there
|
|
were censors for the eleven languages used in these broadcasts. The
|
|
censor for the Polish broadcasts was the Countess Walevska,
|
|
grand-daughter of Napoleon's lady friend. The Countess was a rather
|
|
large lumbering woman who always came into the studio carrying lots of
|
|
parcels. One evening she came in and sat in an armchair on the other
|
|
side of the studio to wait her turn for the Polish broadcast which
|
|
followed the Greek. As I was reading the news bulletin I suddenly
|
|
became conscious of a regular ticking noise in the headphones I was
|
|
wearing. I made a sign to Mr Joly who was acting as switch censor at
|
|
the time, and he got up and walked over to the Countess. He whispered
|
|
in her ear and asked her what was in her hand bag. The Countess
|
|
blushed and replied that she had just collected her alarm clock from
|
|
the watchmaker. I don't know if any sharp-eared listener had heard
|
|
the ticking and thought that we had a time bomb in the studio.
|
|
|
|
"Having mentioned my good friend Mr Norman Joly I must record that
|
|
he was the technical supervisor for the foreign language broadcasts,
|
|
handling such things as wavelengths for the short wave relays,
|
|
training the newsreaders (of whom there must have been over 30) and
|
|
acting as studio manager and switch censor for some of the languages
|
|
which he knew.
|
|
|
|
"A regular broadcaster in our studio was Francis Noel-Baker who
|
|
later became a Labour member of Parliament in the British House of
|
|
Commons, like his father. The Noel-Baker family are well-known in
|
|
Greece because for several generations they have owned a large
|
|
property on the island of Euboea (Evia in Greek). Francis speaks
|
|
fluent Greek, and his mother was related to Lord Byron. In recent
|
|
years he has switched his allegiance to the Conservative Party led by
|
|
his personal friend Margaret Thatcher.
|
|
|
|
"Major Patrick Leigh-Fermor the writer who had kidnapped
|
|
Major-General Heinrich Kreipe in Crete and spirited him away to Allied
|
|
headquarters in Cairo, came to our studio and described how this
|
|
audacious operation had been carried out by him and Captain William
|
|
Stanley Moss, ex-Coldstream Guards, with the considerable assistance
|
|
of the Cretan resistance movement partisans.
|
|
|
|
"Purely by coincidence, it was the Greek news bulletin from Cairo
|
|
which first announced to the world General Montgomery's victory over
|
|
General Rommel at Alamein. I must explain that during a broadcast the
|
|
two doors leading into the studio were kept closed and an armed
|
|
officer of the Military Police sat outside (in civilian clothes) to
|
|
prevent anyone from entering for any reason whatsoever. I was in the
|
|
middle of reading the news when suddenly, without warning, the inner
|
|
door opened and a young despatch-rider, still wearing his crash
|
|
helmet, walked in waving a piece of paper. Mr Joly immediately
|
|
switched off the microphone and asked the young man what he thought he
|
|
was doing. 'Most Immediate sir', he said. (This is the army's
|
|
highest priority classification.) 'To be broadcast at once.'
|
|
|
|
"Mr Joly handed the document to me and I saw it was written in
|
|
English. Taking a deep breath I began translating the text into
|
|
Greek, with some excitement and trepidation owing to the difference in
|
|
syntax between the two languages. Forty-six years later Mr Joly gave
|
|
me the identical sheet of paper, which he had kept as a souvenir. It
|
|
is printed here in full. At the Editorial offices, where they were
|
|
monitoring the newscast, they thought I had gone out of my mind,
|
|
because the communique had not reached them yet. When they tuned in
|
|
to the short wave service of the B.B.C. they heard the communique read
|
|
out more than an hour after our Greek broadcast. A world scoop, if
|
|
ever there was one. Years later when I returned to Athens, many of my
|
|
friends told me they had heard the first broadcast of the thrilling
|
|
bulletin and they could still remember the excitement in my voice.
|
|
|
|
"The Greek section was the first to inaugurate the transmission of
|
|
personal messages. Many people were escaping from occupied Greece in
|
|
sailing boats across to the shores of Asia Minor, ending up in the
|
|
Middle East, mostly in Cairo. They had no means of advising their
|
|
relatives and friends in Greece that they had survived the perilous
|
|
journey. We used to broadcast pre-arranged messages like 'John
|
|
informs Mary that he has arrived at the village'.
|
|
|
|
"As I mentioned above, George Papandreou came to our studio and
|
|
spoke to the people in Greece about the formation of the government of
|
|
National Unity, which had been agreed by all parties meeting in the
|
|
Lebanon, including the representatives of the Partisans operating in
|
|
the mountains of Greece. Papandreou and the government in exile moved
|
|
to Naples in Italy for a short period and then returned to Athens on
|
|
October 12th 1944 for the Liberation.
|
|
|
|
"Finally, I would like to say that in the dark days before
|
|
Montgomery's breakthrough at Alamein, when it was quite on the cards
|
|
that General Rommel might take Cairo, Mr Joly and I were sent to
|
|
Jerusalem to make arrangements for the foreign language broadcasts to
|
|
be continued from there. Fortunately the situation changed and we
|
|
were recalled to Cairo, where we arrived just in time for me to
|
|
broadcast the historic communique announcing the victory at Alamein,
|
|
which marked the turning point of the war in the Middle East.
|
|
|
|
|
|
CHAPTER NINE
|
|
|
|
MISCELLANY
|
|
|
|
1. The first broadcasting stations of the world.
|
|
|
|
Speech was first transmitted for reception by the general public
|
|
from Washington D.C. in 1915 when Europe was still at war. During
|
|
1916 the first `broadcasting' station in the world began regular
|
|
transmissions from a New York suburb.
|
|
|
|
In 1919 Dr. Frank Conrad, then Assistant Chief Engineer of the
|
|
Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, set up, in his own
|
|
garage in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, a 75-watt transmitter (8XK) from
|
|
which he broadcast musical entertainment for other radio enthusiasts.
|
|
This was the first continued scheduled broadcasting in history. The
|
|
Westinghouse Company realised the potential value of Conrad's work and
|
|
built KDKA, the first regular commercial broadcasting station in the
|
|
world, which began its career by announcing the results of the
|
|
Harding-Cox election returns on the November 2nd 1920.
|
|
|
|
The first broadcasting station in Europe was PCGG which began
|
|
transmitting on November 6th 1919 from the Hague in Holland. Hanso
|
|
Steringa Idzerda, a 35 year old engineer, obtained the first licence
|
|
granted in Europe for the transmission of music and speech for general
|
|
reception, as opposed to the wireless telegraphy stations which had
|
|
been operating point to point services. From the end of 1919 to 1924
|
|
this station transmitted a series of musical programmes three times a
|
|
week called `The Hague Concerts'. The original wavelength of
|
|
670 metres was later changed to 1,150 metres.
|
|
|
|
At that time most of the people who heard these concerts would
|
|
have been using headphones and they would not have been very critical
|
|
about the quality of the sounds they were hearing compared to the
|
|
magical novelty of snatching voices and music apparently out of thin
|
|
air. This historic transmitter can be seen in the museum of the Dutch
|
|
Postal Services in the Hague.
|
|
|
|
The first transmissions of speech and music in England were made
|
|
from Chelmsford, Essex, when a 15kW transmitter of the Marconi Company
|
|
began regular transmissions in February of 1920.
|
|
|
|
In the summer of 1924 the world's greatest radio companies -
|
|
British Marconi, German Telefunken, French Radio Telegraphie and
|
|
American R.C.A. - met in London to discuss transatlantic
|
|
communications. The learned gentlemen all agreed that the Atlantic
|
|
could only be spanned by ultra-long waves of 10,000 to 20,000 metres,
|
|
which would require the use of hundreds of kilowatts of power and
|
|
receivers as large as a trunk, not to speak of antennas more than a
|
|
mile long. Dr. Frank Conrad, who was also present at the conference,
|
|
had brought with him a small short wave receiver less than a foot
|
|
square. When he connected it to a curtain rod as an antenna the faint
|
|
but clear voices of his assistants in the U.S.A. were heard from
|
|
nearly four thousand miles away. With this spectacular demonstration
|
|
he administered the deathblow to all plans for high power
|
|
ultra-long-wavelength transmitters, and from then on the commercial
|
|
companies concentrated their efforts on developing equipment for
|
|
international communications on the short waves.
|
|
|
|
With present-day electronic news gathering and world-wide
|
|
satellite links, the problems faced by broadcasting organisations
|
|
fifty years ago when transmitting programmes which did not originate
|
|
in a studio were thought to be very complex. In the B.B.C. Handbook
|
|
for 1928 there was an article entitled `Outside Broadcast
|
|
Problems' which said,
|
|
|
|
"Work outside the studio is often the most difficult that the
|
|
broadcast engineer can be asked to undertake; not so much from a
|
|
technical as from a practical point of view. Very often he has to
|
|
take his apparatus to some place he has never seen before, set up his
|
|
amplifiers in most awkward positions, test his lines to the studio,
|
|
decide on his microphone placings and run out the wiring in the space
|
|
of an hour or so, with little previous experience to guide him. It is
|
|
in fairly echoey halls, theatres and churches that the majority of
|
|
outside broadcasts take place. For example, a sermon preached in a
|
|
church would be intelligible probably to the whole of the congregation.
|
|
But to render it intelligibly on a loud-speaker, the microphone would
|
|
have to be, say, not more than ten feet from the speaker. In
|
|
broadcasting a play from a theatre, when the speakers are moving
|
|
about, the only way of dealing with the problem is to use several
|
|
microphones and a mixing device which enables the engineer to change
|
|
silently from one microphone to another, or to combine them in varying
|
|
proportions. Some rapid switching may sometimes be necessary.
|
|
|
|
"Even with good microphones and amplifiers the engineer in the
|
|
field may often experience difficulties with the lines connecting the
|
|
outside point to the studio. The majority of such lines do not
|
|
transmit the higher frequencies adequately, especially the longer
|
|
ones. The problems become immense when European simultaneous
|
|
broadcasts are attempted. Experiments on the continental wireless
|
|
link have done no more than reveal its unreliability. The undersea
|
|
telephone line, however, does not give either good or even intelligible
|
|
quality of speech if it is longer than a couple of hundred miles, and
|
|
it is quite unusable for the transmission of a musical programme.
|
|
|
|
"The B.B.C. has been the first in the world to exploit
|
|
Simultaneous Broadcasting to its fullest advantage for a national
|
|
system, and thanks to the co-operation of the Post Office engineers,
|
|
it is possible to pick up a programme wherever it may take place
|
|
within the British Isles and radiate it simultaneously from all
|
|
distribution centres.
|
|
|
|
"Looking ahead still further and assuming that the wireless will
|
|
supplement the wire line link, there is no reason why a simultaneous
|
|
broadcast of something of fundamental importance to the whole
|
|
civilised world should not take place some time in the future."
|
|
|
|
In a book entitled "Radio Goes to War" published by Faber & Faber
|
|
in 1943, Charles J. Rolo wrote,
|
|
|
|
"Radio went to war on five continents shortly after the Nazi
|
|
Party came to power in Germany. In nine years it has been streamlined
|
|
from a crude propaganda bludgeon into the most powerful single
|
|
instrument of political warfare the world has ever known. Spreading
|
|
with the speed of light, it carries the human voice seven times round
|
|
the globe in one second. When Hitler makes a speech in the Kroll
|
|
Opera House in Berlin, listeners in America and the whole world hear
|
|
his words by short wave even before his own immediate audience hears
|
|
them. Radio speaks in all tongues to all classes. All pervasive, it
|
|
penetrates beyond national frontiers, spans the walls of censorship
|
|
that bar the way to the written word, and seeps through the fine net
|
|
of the Gestapo. It reaches the illiterate and the informed, the young
|
|
and the old, the civilian and the soldier in the front line, the
|
|
policy makers and the inarticulate masses. So great is the importance
|
|
of radio to-day that the seizure of a defeated nation's transmitters
|
|
has become one of the primary spoils of war."
|
|
|
|
In Greece, broadcasting was started in the northern city of
|
|
Thessaloniki (Salonica) by the pioneer of Balkan broadcasting Christos
|
|
Tsingeridis, in 1928. A museum in that city tells the full story of
|
|
the first broadcasting station in the whole of the Balkans.
|
|
|
|
Broadcasting in the capital, Athens, started on March 25th 1938
|
|
when a second-hand 15 kW Telefunken transmitter was put into operation
|
|
in the suburb of Liosia. The centre-fed T antenna was supported
|
|
between two pylons of 85 metres (279 feet). In 1944 when the German
|
|
army was pulling out of Athens they tried to blow the the pylons up
|
|
but one of them remained standing at a crazy angle, because one of the
|
|
explosive charges had been placed incorrectly.
|
|
|
|
2. Avlis `The Voice of Hellas'.
|
|
|
|
The 5th Programme of the Greek broadcasting service (Elliniki
|
|
Radiophonia) is transmitted from the short wave transmitting centre at
|
|
Avlis, about 70 kilometres north of Athens. The station was put into
|
|
service in 1972 and has two 100KW Marconi short wave transmitters and
|
|
a veritable forest of antennas covering 1,100 acres, arranged in three
|
|
lines to cover the desired directions, as can be seen on the great
|
|
circle map. The pylons supporting the 6 MHz arrays are truly
|
|
impressive at 328 feet. Each line has eight separate antennas for the
|
|
6, 7, 9, 11, 15, 17 and 21 MHz broadcasting bands.
|
|
|
|
Each antenna consists of two curtains with a total of 8
|
|
horizontal dipoles. The dipoles are all fed by open wire feeders
|
|
which can be remotely switched to enable radiation in two directions
|
|
180 degrees apart. There are also three curtains for the 11 metre
|
|
band (26 MHz) which may be put into service during sunspot cycle 22 if
|
|
the M.U.F. allows it.
|
|
|
|
For transmissions to neighbouring countries like Cyprus, Turkey,
|
|
the Balkans and the countries of the Middle East, there are two
|
|
rotatable log periodic antennas with a high angle of vertical
|
|
radiation (45 degrees) and a wide angle of 32 degrees in the
|
|
horizontal plane.
|
|
|
|
The remotely controlled switching centre allows each of the two
|
|
transmitters to be connected to any one of the 23 antennas.
|
|
Electromechanical protection circuits ensure that a transmitter can
|
|
only be connected to an antenna that is tuned to the same frequency.
|
|
The change of antennas and transmitting frequencies is made during the
|
|
ten-minute interval between programmes, which always begin on the
|
|
hour, preceded by the now familiar signature tune of a shepherd
|
|
playing his flute with the tinkling of sheep-bells in the background,
|
|
recorded in 1936, followed by the Greek National Anthem.
|
|
|
|
The special programmes of news and features originate in the
|
|
broadcasting headquarters in Athens and go on the air throughout the
|
|
24 hours of the day in Greek, English and many foreign languages.
|
|
Reports of reception are welcome and should be addressed to K.E.B.A.,
|
|
Avlis, Greece. (The Greek initials stand for short wave transmitting
|
|
centre.)
|
|
|
|
But Avlis was `in the news' long before the Greek broadcasting
|
|
service decided to install its short wave transmitters there. In
|
|
ancient times a great fleet of ships had been assembled in the harbour
|
|
there, ready to set sail for Troy, following the abduction of the
|
|
beautiful Helen of Sparta by Paris, the young Prince of Troy. But
|
|
there had been no wind for many weeks, and the sea was dead calm.
|
|
|
|
Agamemnon, the King of Mycenae, who had himself contributed over
|
|
100 ships to the fleet, decided to consult his Seer. As was the
|
|
custom, the Seer slaughtered a young lamb and scrutinised its
|
|
entrails. He then announced that the wind would come up if Agamemnon
|
|
sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia on the Altar of Sacrifice. King
|
|
Agamemnon despatched a messenger to Mycenae (no VHF repeater being
|
|
available in those days) to tell his wife Queen Klitemnestra to send
|
|
their daughter Iphigenia to Avlis (Aulis). The King said he was
|
|
planning to marry her off to Achilles, the most eligible bachelor of
|
|
the day. When poor Iphigenia arrived she was quickly placed on the
|
|
Sacrificial Altar - and had her pretty throat slit.
|
|
|
|
However, there seems to be another version to the end of the
|
|
story. Just before the human sacrifice was due to be made Artemis
|
|
(Diana, the famous Goddess of Hunting) sent a small deer which was
|
|
placed on the altar instead of the girl. Iphigenia was secretly
|
|
spirited away to Taurida, in northern Greece, and put in charge of
|
|
Diana's temple there.
|
|
|
|
(This story is the subject of a well-known classical Greek play.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
Historical note on the Marconi-Stille steel tape recording machine.
|
|
|
|
At the beginning of the century Professor Poulsen, one of radio's
|
|
earliest pioneers, discovered that a magnetic impression could be made
|
|
on a moving length of wire which remained on the wire even after it
|
|
had been rolled up. He used his machine to record the Morse code
|
|
only, that is magnetism `on' and `off'. In 1924 Dr. Stille in Germany
|
|
made a machine which could record sounds. The B.B.C. sent two
|
|
engineers to Berlin, and after a demonstration they offered to buy the
|
|
machine, but in the end they returned to England empty-handed.
|
|
|
|
In 1931 Mr Louis Blattner managed to buy a machine and bring it
|
|
to England. He called it the Blattnerphone. By this time Dr. Stille
|
|
had replaced Poulsen's wire with a flat steel tape 6 mm wide. Each
|
|
reel of tape could only accommodate 20 minutes of recording. There was
|
|
a constant and heavy background hiss, due to the inherent quality of
|
|
the steel tape itself.
|
|
|
|
Stille Inventions Ltd. joined forces with Marconi's Wireless
|
|
Telegraph Co. Ltd. to produce, with the close co-operation of the
|
|
B.B.C. Research Department, the Marconi-Stille machine which was put
|
|
into use in 1934. The tape width was reduced to 3 mm and the
|
|
thickness to only 0.08 of a millimetre. In order to secure the
|
|
reproduction of the higher audio frequencies, it was found necessary
|
|
to run the tape at a rate of 90 metres per minute past the recording
|
|
and reproducing heads. This meant that the length of tape required
|
|
for a half-hour's programme was nearly 3 kilometres!
|
|
|
|
|
|
4. Brief description of the ribbon or velocity microphone.
|
|
|
|
George Papandreou, Greek Prime Minister of the war-time government
|
|
of National Unity in exile, is seen with the famous ribbon microphone
|
|
developed by the B.B.C. in 1934. This microphone (R.C.A.
|
|
designation 44BX) consists of a ribbon of corrugated aluminium foil
|
|
only 0.0002 of an inch thick suspended vertically in a very intense
|
|
but narrow magnetic field. When sounds vibrate the ribbon extremely
|
|
low alternating voltages are developed at the ends of the ribbon,
|
|
which has a very low impedance of only 0.15 ohm, necessitating the use
|
|
of a step-up transformer of 1:45 turns ratio very close to it. The
|
|
frequency response is 20 to 16,000 Hz. A drawback is that the ribbon
|
|
can be blown out of the magnetic gap by sudden puffs of air when a
|
|
speaker gets too close to the microphone, so the casing is lined with
|
|
several layers of chiffon which let in the sounds but not the air.
|
|
Without its base the ribbon microphone weighs 4 kilograms, nearly 9
|
|
lbs.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
5. An outstanding antenna system designed by Rex G4JUJ for Phase III
|
|
amateur satellite communication.
|
|
|
|
The up-link section comprises four 88-element Jaybeam multi-
|
|
beams which provide a power gain of 225.
|
|
|
|
The two down-link 8 element yagis are each fitted with a small
|
|
D.C. motor directly coupled to a 9 inch length of M5 brass studding
|
|
rotating inside a block of PTFE linked to a push rod which can move
|
|
the antennas 75 degrees both sides of the vertical position, either in
|
|
unison or in opposite directions. This system provides infinitely
|
|
variable polarisation which optimises the down-link signal at any
|
|
instant.
|
|
|
|
|
|
6. The saga of H.H.M.S.ADRIAS
|
|
|
|
While fighting in the area of the Dodecanese Islands on the night
|
|
of the 22nd October 1943 the destroyer ADRIAS (L67) was seriously
|
|
damaged by a mine but refused to sink.
|
|
|
|
Under the command of Commander John Toumbas the ship covered a
|
|
distance of approximately 700 nautical miles, reaching the port of
|
|
Alexandria in Egypt on the eve of the feast of Saint Nicholas, the
|
|
patron saint of all seamen.
|
|
|
|
The Greek Minister of the Navy Sofoclis Venizelos, and the
|
|
British Admiral in command of the Royal Navy in the Eastern
|
|
Mediterranean, provided an honorary escort for the brave little ship
|
|
that had refused to die. A few months later the snub-nosed L67 joined
|
|
the fleet of 100 vessels of all sorts which sailed to Greece for the
|
|
Liberation.
|
|
|
|
The photographs were taken by the author (with the exception of
|
|
the damaged L67) who travelled back to Greece on H.H.M.S. AVEROF in
|
|
the same convoy. The photograph of L84, a similar type destroyer to
|
|
ADRIAS shows how much of her bows was blown off by the collision with
|
|
the mine.
|
|
|
|
(H.H.M.S. stands for His Hellenic Majesty's Ship.)
|
|
|
|
7. German sabotage at the Cable & Wireless station at Pallini, Greece,
|
|
in World War II.
|
|
|
|
As the German army was pulling out of Greece in October 1944 its
|
|
engineers carried out extensive sabotage to installations of a
|
|
strategic value. At Pallini, not far from Athens, an attempt was made
|
|
to destroy the transmitter hall by dropping one of the antenna towers
|
|
onto it, but the equipment was not damaged.
|
|
|
|
They were more successful at the Royal Navy transmitting site at
|
|
Votanikos. Here they tried to destroy six 300 foot tubular masts.
|
|
One remained standing and also the lower part of another. All the
|
|
test gear in the lab was thrown out of a second floor window and
|
|
burnt. I was acting as official photographer for my unit at the time.
|
|
When I walked into a small store room I saw all the equipment had been
|
|
thrown off the shelves on to the floor, but appeared to be intact. I
|
|
spotted a box of brand new packed German navy morse keys and decided
|
|
the time had come for me to acquire a small war trophy of my own. As
|
|
I bent down to pick up a key, I was horrified to see two large sticks
|
|
of gelignite perched perilously on the edge of a shelf. The explosive
|
|
was tied with white ribbon, with a weight attached to the other end.
|
|
I froze to the spot. Gingerly I lifted my trophy out of the box and
|
|
began to walk slowly backwards, being very careful not to knock
|
|
anything over. I breathed a sigh of relief when I was out of the room
|
|
and immediately alerted the engineers who came and defused the booby
|
|
trap. So this book might never have been written thanks to the German
|
|
army.
|
|
|
|
At the Athens broadcasting station transmitter site at Liosia my
|
|
unit erected a small temporary 'T' antenna which allowed the station
|
|
to come on the air again, but a short time later, when the ELAS
|
|
guerrillas overran the area they began using the transmitter to
|
|
broadcast their own view of events. We provided the broadcasting
|
|
authority with a BC 610 mobile transmitter installed next to the
|
|
Parliament building in the centre of town, using the same frequency of
|
|
610 KHz. Listeners in Cairo couldn't understand what was going on
|
|
when one moment they heard an official government announcement and a
|
|
little later a war communique issued by the Communist guerrillas.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
8. Over-the-horizon or Ionospheric HF Radar - OTHR
|
|
|
|
|
|
As mentioned briefly in Chapter 1, it was in April 1976 that the
|
|
then Soviet Union first unleashed a diabolical noise on the HF bands
|
|
which caused widespread interference to all broadcasting and
|
|
telecommunication services between 6 and 20 MHz. On the first day the
|
|
"knock-knock-knock" went on continuously for over ten hours. Radio
|
|
amateurs, who were among the services that suffered from the
|
|
interference, soon came to call this noise "the woodpecker". By
|
|
rotating their beams when tuned to the 14 MHz band they established
|
|
that the transmissions appeared to originate from the vicinity of the
|
|
town of Gomel in the U.S.S.R.
|
|
|
|
The governments of many countries world-wide immediately
|
|
protested to Moscow, and all they got in reply was a brief statement
|
|
that the U.S.S.R. was carrying out "an experiment".
|
|
|
|
The reason for the very strong on/off pulses was probably
|
|
because, at first, the Russians were using existing radar antennas
|
|
which permit the transmitting and receiving functions to share the
|
|
same antenna. Modern OTHR installations have different transmitting
|
|
and receiving sites, often located many miles apart.
|
|
|
|
From the early 1950s pulsed oblique ionosphere sounders had shown
|
|
that the normal ionosphere is much more stable than had previously
|
|
been thought to be. The physical reason for this is that the
|
|
incredibly tenuous ionized gas which does the reflecting has a
|
|
molasses-like viscosity. Of course, there are daily and seasonal
|
|
changes, but over limited periods of half an hour or so, the F layer
|
|
at a given location is actually quite well-behaved. It bounces back
|
|
signals in a nearly constant direction and with nearly constant
|
|
amplitude -- just what is required for good radar performance.
|
|
|
|
Over-the-horizon HF radars use the ionosphere as a kind of mirror
|
|
to "see" around the curvature of the earth. They have a variety of
|
|
uses, both military and civilian. And they have the advantage over
|
|
line-of-sight microwave radars of being able to cover enormous areas
|
|
with much less power and at a fraction of the cost of the latter.
|
|
|
|
A "relocatable" OTHR system can track aircraft targets right down
|
|
to ground level. In an early experiment operators were puzzled by the
|
|
sudden disappearance from their screen of an aircraft they had been
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tracking as it taxied along the ground. They found out later that the
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reason for the disappearance was that the aircraft had gone into a
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metal hangar which did not show on the screen because it was not in
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motion, as explained below.
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In 1979 the United States Air Force began experimenting with an
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OTHR system at a site near Bangor, Maine. Because HF frequencies were
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being used the power was kept very low to minimize interference to
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other services during the early tests. At the time of writing (1989)
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it is believed that a full-power relocatable OTHR system situated in
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Virginia is being used in the anti-drug war.
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As can be seen from the map this ROTHR can cover a vast area of
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1.6 million nautical miles, straddling the whole Caribbean. The scan
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area stretches from the coast of Colombia in South America up through
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Nicaragua and Honduras to Florida (on its west boundary) and then
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southwards through Puerto Rico, to Trinidad & Tobago and the northern
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coast of Venezuela.
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But this vast area is not covered continuously; the system
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operator can provide surveillance in a number of sectors known as DIRs
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(dwell information regions). Each one of the 176 DIRs can be
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"illuminated" for only a few seconds at a time. Small aircraft and
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small vessels can be detected by an ingenious method, only when they
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move. This is how it is done:
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At the receiving site of the ROTHR system a very large antenna
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stretches out over a distance of 8,400 feet. It consists of 372 dual-
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monopole vertical elements each 19 feet high, backed by a huge
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reflector screen which makes the antenna substantially unidirectional.
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Each pair of vertical elements has its own receiver which digitizes
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the incoming signals. All the digitized signals are then fed through a
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fibre-optic link to a master signal processor. The main receiver can
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|
be programmed to pass on "returns" from one particular region while
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eliminating most of the other returns as unwanted noise or clutter.
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|
But because the wanted target is moving, while the clutter is not, a
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|
filtering system based on the Doppler Shift principle (even when the
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echo is only one or two Hertz different) will lock on to it and track
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it as long as it stays in motion.
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Futhermore, the ROTHR system has its own built-in automatic
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|
management & assessment function and does not have to depend on
|
|
external sounding data. It measures the ionosphere height continuously
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|
and instantly selects the most appropriate frequency to use to scan
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|
the target area, ideally in one hop.
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|
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This automatic function uses a quasi-vertical incidence sounder
|
|
(QVI) to measure the height of the ionosphere near the transmitting
|
|
and receiving sites, which as mentioned earlier can be miles apart,
|
|
and a radar backscatter sounder to measure the height of the
|
|
ionosphere downrange 500 to 1,800 nautical miles away. The incoming
|
|
real-time data from these soundings are compared with data stored in
|
|
computer memory. Once real-time data are matched to a model of the
|
|
ionosphere, the model can be used to operate the system for the best
|
|
results, based on the prevailing propagation conditions. The data for
|
|
the ionospheric models take up more than 200 megabytes of computer
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|
storage space. Operators thus know when and where to expect degraded
|
|
performance. Of course, strong solar activity can virtually make
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|
over-the-horizon HF radar unusable.
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A Spectrum Analyser display shows all the frequencies between 5
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|
and 28 MHz. In order to avoid possible interference to other services,
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|
those frequencies which are known to be permanently allocated to fixed
|
|
broadcasting and telecommunication stations are locked out, as well as
|
|
frequencies which happen to be used at any instant so that they can
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|
also be avoided by the OTHR transmitter.
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GLOSSARY for non-technical readers.
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|
A.M. A mode of modulation (amplitude).
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|
A.R.R.L. Amateur Radio Relay League (U.S.A.).
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|
Beacon Transmitter radiating identification signal.
|
|
C.Q. General call, to any station.
|
|
C.R.T. Cathode ray tube (like TV screen).
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|
C.W. Continuous wave (mode of sending telegraphy).
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|
Callsign Station identification (letters & numbers).
|
|
Coherer A device for making radio frequencies audible.
|
|
DE Morse abbreviation for `from' (French).
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|
DX Communication over a long distance.
|
|
Detector Any device for making radio frequencies audible.
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|
Doppler shift Change in pitch (of sound) or frequency of a (radio) wave
|
|
E.D.E.S. Initials of a war-time Greek guerrilla organisation.
|
|
E.E.R. Equivalent Greek initials for R.A.A.G. (q.v.)
|
|
E.L.A.S. Initials of a war-time Greek guerrilla organisation.
|
|
E.L.F. Extremely Low Frequency.
|
|
E.M.E. Earth-moon-earth. Also Moonbounce q.v.
|
|
H.H.M.S. His Hellenic Majesty's Ship.
|
|
Gasfet A type of transistor.
|
|
KHz Kilohertz - international unit for kilocycle.
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|
M.U.F. Maximum usable frequency.
|
|
MHz Megahertz - international unit for megacycle.
|
|
Moonbounce Communication by reflection from the moon.
|
|
OTHR Over-the-horizon radar.
|
|
Q code Abbreviations used when communicating by telegraphy.
|
|
Q1 Unreadable.
|
|
Q2 Barely readable - only some words.
|
|
Q3 Readable with considerable difficulty.
|
|
Q4 Readable with practically no difficulty.
|
|
Q5 Perfectly readable.
|
|
QRO High power.
|
|
QRP Low power.
|
|
QRT "Stop sending". Frequently used for "shut up".
|
|
QSO Two-way communication.
|
|
QST Call to all stations. Also title of journal of the A.R.R.L.
|
|
QTH Location or address of a station.
|
|
R.A.A.G. Radio Amateur Association of Greece.
|
|
R.F. Radio frequency.
|
|
R.S.G.B. Radio Society of Great Britain.
|
|
RST System of reporting readability, strength & tone of a signal.
|
|
RX Receiver.
|
|
S unit Unit for reporting strength of received signal.
|
|
S.I. unit International system of definitions.
|
|
SSB Single side-band - a mode of modulation.
|
|
SWL Room where radio equipment is set up.
|
|
Shack Room where radio equipment is set up.
|
|
Silent key Deceased radio amateur.
|
|
Sporadic E. Propagation via the E layer of the ionosphere.
|
|
T.E.P. Transequatorial propagation.
|
|
TX Transmitter.
|
|
Troposcatter Propagation via the troposphere.
|
|
U.H.F. Ultra high frequency.
|
|
V.H.F. Very high frequency.
|
|
W.A.C. Worked (contacted) all continents.
|
|
XYL Wife of a radio amateur.
|
|
YL Young lady operator.
|
|
73 Morse abbreviation for ``best regards''.
|
|
Yagi A type of antenna designed by a Japanese of that name.
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|
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