The dawn of amateur radio in the U.K. and Greece: a personal view

Norman F. Joly.

COPYRIGHT 1990

London : Joly, 1990. - 151p. - 0-9515628-0-0

C O N T E N T S

0. PROLOGUE

1. THE DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRICITY

2. THE BIRTH OF RADIO COMMUNICATIONS

3. WHAT IS A RADIO AMATEUR?

4. THE 1921 AMATEUR TRANSATLANTIC TESTS

5. THE FIRST GREEK RADIO AMATEURS

6. WORLD WAR II AND AFTER IN GREECE

7. PIONEERS IN GREECE

8. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES & ANECDOTES

9. MISCELLANY

10. GLOSSARY FOR NON-TECHNICAL READERS

Prologue

Thales of Miletus.

Thales, who was born in 640 B.C., was a man of exceptional wisdom and one of the Seven Sages of Ancient Greece. He was the father of Greek, and consequently of European philosophy and science. His speculations embraced a wide range of subjects relating to political as well as to celestial matters. One must remember that even up to the 18th century there was no clear distinction between philosophy and science, both being products of the human mind in its attempts to explain reality.

Thales had studied astronomy in Egypt so he was able to draw up accurate tables forecasting when the River Nile would be in flood. But he first became widely known by anticipating an eclipse of the sun for May 585 B.C., which happened to coincide with the final battle of the war between the Lydians and the Persians. He had used some tables drawn up by Babylonian astronomers, but he did not succeed in forecasting the exact day (May 28th) or the hour of the spectacular event.

It can well be said that Thales was the first man ever recorded to have cornered the market in a commodity: having foreseen a three-year drought he bought up large quantities of olive oil and stored it for sale at a later date.

But who could possibly have imagined that one of Thales' original speculations would affect the Radio Amateurs of the 20th Century? He believed that certain inanimate substances, like lodestones (magnetic rocks) and the resin amber, possessed psyche (a soul).

Many centuries had to elapse before this soul was identified as static electricity and magnetism and harnessed for the generation of mains electricity which dramatically altered the pattern of life on our planet—and also led to the creation of our hobby of Amateur Radio.

About 400 years ago an English scientist called William Gilbert (1544-1603), who had read about the unexplained observation of Thales, also became interested in the intangible property and decided to call it electricity, from the classical Greek word for amber, which is electron.

CHAPTER ONE

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRICITY

The phenomenon which Thales had observed and recorded five centuries before the birth of Christ aroused the interest of many scientists through the ages. They made various practical experiments in their efforts to identify the elusive force which Thales had likened to a 'soul' and which we now know to have been static electricity.

Of all forms of energy, electricity is the most baffling and difficult to describe. An electric current cannot be seen. In fact it does not exist outside the wires and other conductors which carry it. A live wire carrying a current looks exactly the same and weighs exactly the same as it does when it is not carrying a current. An electric current is simply a movement or flow of electrons.

Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman and scientist born in Boston in 1706, investigated the nature of thunder and lightning by flying a child's kite during a thunderstorm. He had attached a metal spike to the kite, and at the other end of the string to which the kite was tied he secured a key. As the rain soaked into the string, electricity flowed freely down the string and Franklin was able to draw large sparks from the key. Of course this could have been very dangerous, but he had foreseen it and had supported the string through an insulator. He observed that this electricity had the same properties as the static electricity produced by friction.

But long before Franklin many other scientists had carried out research into the nature of electricity.

In England William Gilbert (1544-1603) had noticed that the powers of attraction and repulsion of two non-metallic rods which he had rubbed briskly were similar to those of lodestone and amber—they had acquired the curious quality we call magnetism. Remembering Thales of old he coined the word 'electricity'.

Otto von Guericke (1602-1686) a Mayor of Magdeburg in Germany, was an amateur scientist who had constructed all manner of gadgets. One of them was a machine consisting of two glass discs revolving in opposite directions which produced high voltage charges through friction. Ramsden and Wimshurst built improved versions of the machine.

A significant breakthrough occurred when Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) in Italy constructed a simple electric cell (in 1799) which produced a flow of electrons by chemical means. Two plates, one of copper and the other of zinc, were placed in an acid solution and a current flowed through an external wire connecting the two plates. Later he connected cells in series (voltaic pile) which consisted of alternate layers of zinc and copper discs separated by flannel discs soaked in brine or acid which produced a higher electric pressure (voltage). But Volta never found the right explanation of why his cell was working. He thought the flow of electric current was due to the contact between the two metals, whereas in fact it results from the chemical action of the electrolyte on the zinc plate. However, his discovery proved to be of incalculable value in research, as it enabled scientists to carry out experiments which led to the discoveries of the heating, lighting, chemical and magnetic effects of electricity.

One of the many scientists and physicists who took advantage of the 'current electricity' made possible by Volta's cells was Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851) of Denmark. Like many others he was looking for a connection between the age-old study of magnetism and electricity, but now he was able to pass electric currents through wires and place magnets in various positions near the wires. His epoch-making discovery which established for the first time the relationship between magnetism and electricity was in fact an accident.

While lecturing to students he showed them that the current flowing in a wire held over a magnetic compass needle and at right angles to it (that is east-west) had no effect on the needle. Oersted suggested to his assistant that he might try holding the wire parallel to the length of the needle (north-south) and hey presto, the needle was deflected! He had stumbled upon the electromagnetic effect in the first recorded instance of a wire behaving like a magnet when a current is passed through it.

A development of Oersted's demonstration with the compass needle was used to construct the world's first system of signaling by the use of electricity.

In 1837 Charles Wheatstone and William Cooke took out a patent for the world's first Five-needle Telegraph, which was installed between Paddington railway station in west London and West Drayton station a few miles away. The five copper wires required for this system were embedded in blocks of wood.

Electrolysis, the chemical decomposition of a substance into its constituent elements by the action of an electric current, was discovered by the English chemists Carlisle and William Nicholson (1753-1815). If an electric current is passed through water it is broken down into the two elements of which it is composed—hydrogen and oxygen. The process is used extensively in modern industry for electroplating. Michael Faraday (1791-1867) who was employed as a chemist at the Royal Institution, was responsible for introducing many of the technical terms connected with electrolysis, like electrolyte for the liquid through which the electric current is passed, and anode and cathode for the positive and negative electrodes respectively. He also established the laws of the process itself. But most people remember his name in connection with his practical demonstration of electromagnetic induction.

In France Andre-Marie Ampere (1775-1836) carried out a complete mathematical study of the laws which govern the interaction between wires carrying electric currents.

In Germany in 1826 a Bavarian schoolmaster Georg Ohm (1789-1854) had defined the relationship between electric pressure (voltage), current (flow rate) and resistance in a circuit (Ohm's law) but 16 years had to elapse before he received recognition for his work.

Scientists were now convinced that since the flow of an electric current in a wire or a coil of wire caused it to acquire magnetic properties, the opposite might also prove to be true: a magnet could possibly be used to generate a flow of electricity.

Michael Faraday had worked on this problem for ten years when finally, in 1830, he gave his famous lecture in which he demonstrated, for the first time in history, the principle of electromagnetic induction. He had constructed powerful electromagnets consisting of coils of wire. When he caused the magnetic lines of force surrounding one coil to rise and fall by interrupting or varying the flow of current, a similar current was induced in a neighbouring coil closely coupled to the first.

The colossal importance of Faraday's discovery was that it paved the way for the generation of electricity by mechanical means. However, as can be seen from the drawing, the basic generator produces an alternating flow of current.(A.C.)

Rotating a coil of wire steadily through a complete revolution in the steady magnetic field between the north and south poles of a magnet results in an electromotive force (E.M.F.) at its terminals which rises in value, falls back to zero, reverses in a negative direction, reaches a peak and again returns to zero. This completes one cycle or sine wave. (1Hz in S.I.units).

In recent years other methods have been developed for generating electrical power in relatively small quantities for special applications. Semiconductors, which combine heat insulation with good electrical conduction, are used for thermoelectric generators to power isolated weather stations, artificial satellites, undersea cables and marker buoys. Specially developed diode valves are used as thermionic generators with an efficiency, at present, of only 20% but the heat taken away from the anode is used to raise steam for conventional power generation.

Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) one of Britain's leading chemists of the 18th century, is best remembered for his safety lamp for miners which cut down the risk of methane gas explosions in mines. It was Davy who first demonstrated that electricity could be used to produce light. He connected two carbon rods to a heavy duty storage battery. When he touched the tips of the rods together a very bright white light was produced. As he drew the rods apart, the arc light persisted until the tips had burnt away to the critical gap which extinguished the light. As a researcher and lecturer at the Royal Institution Davy worked closely with Michael Faraday who first joined the institution as his manservant and later became his secretary. Davy's crowning honour in the scientific world came in 1820, when he was elected President of the Royal Society.

In the U.S.A. the prolific inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) who had invented the incandescent carbon filament bulb, built a number of electricity generators in the vicinity of the Niagara Falls. These used the power of the falling water to drive hydraulic turbines which were coupled to the dynamos. These generators were fitted with a spinning switch or commutator (one of the neatest gadgets Edison ever invented) to make the current flow in unidirectional pulses (D.C.) In 1876 all electrical equipment was powered by direct current.

Today mains electricity plays a vital part in our everyday lives and its applications are widespread and staggering in their immensity. But we must not forget that popular demand for this convenient form of power arose only about 100 years ago, mainly for illumination.

Recent experiments in superconductivity, using ceramic instead metal conductors have given us an exciting glimpse into what might be achieved for improving efficiency in the distribution of electric power.

Historians of the future may well characterise the 20th century as 'the century of electricity & electronics'. But Edison's D.C. generators could not in themselves, have achieved the spectacular progress that has been made. All over the world we depend totally on a system of transmitting mains electricity over long distances which was originally created by an amazing inventor whose scientific discoveries changed, and are still changing, the whole world. His name was scarcely known to the general public, especially in Europe, where he was born.

Who was this unknown pioneer? Some people reckon that it was this astonishing visionary who invented wireless, remote control, robotics and a form of X-ray photography using high frequency radio waves. A patent which he took out in the U.S.A. in 1890 ultimately led to the design of the humble ignition coil which energises billions and billions of spark plugs in all the motor cars of the world. His American patents fill a book two inches thick. His name was Nicola Tesla (1856-1943).

Nicola Tesla was born in a small village in Croatia which at that time formed part of the great Austro-Hungarian Empire. Today it is a northern province of Yugoslavia, a state created after the 1914-1918 war. Tesla studied at the Graz Technical University and later in Budapest. Early in his studies he had the idea that a way had to be found to run electric motors directly from A.C. generators. His professor in Graz had assured him categorically that this was not possible. But young Tesla was not convinced. When he went to Budapest he got a job in the Central Telegraph Office, and one evening in 1882, as he was sitting on a bench in the City Park he had an inspiration which ultimately led to the solution of the problem.

Tesla remembered a poem by the German poet Goethe about the sun which supports life on the earth and when the day is over moves on to give life to the other side of the globe. He picked up a twig and began to scratch a drawing on the soil in front of him. He drew four coils arranged symmetrically round the circumference of a circle. In the centre he drew a rotor or armature. As each coil in turn was energised it attracted the rotor towards it and the rotary motion was established. When he constructed the first practical models he used eight, sixteen and even more coils. The simple drawing on the ground led to the design of the first induction motor driven directly by A.C.electricity.

Tesla emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1884. During the first year he filed no less than 30 patents mostly in relation to the generation and distribution of A.C. mains electricity. He designed and built his 'A.C. Polyphase System' which generated three-phase alternating current at 25 Hz. One particular unit delivered 422 amperes at 12,000 volts. The beauty of this system was that the voltage could be stepped down using transformers for local use, or stepped up to many thousands of volts for transmission over long distances through relatively thin conductors. Edison's generating stations were incapable of any such thing.

Tesla signed a lucrative contract with the famous railway engineer George Westinghouse, the inventor of the Westinghouse Air Brake which is used by most railways all over the world to the present day. Their generating station was put into service in 1895 and was called the Niagara Falls Electricity Generating Company. It supplied power for the Westinghouse network of trains and also for an industrial complex in Buffalo, New York.

After ten years Tesla began to experiment with high frequencies. The Tesla Coil which he had patented in 1890 was capable of raising voltages to unheard of levels such as 300,000 volts. Edison, who was still generating D.C., claimed A.C. was dangerous and to prove it contracted with the government to produce the first electric chair using A.C. for the execution of murderers condemned to death. When it was first used it was a ghastly flop. The condemned man moaned and groaned and foamed at the mouth. After four minutes of repeated application of the A.C.voltage smoke began to come out of his back. It was obvious that the victim had suffered a horribly drawn-out death.

Tesla said he could prove that A.C. was not dangerous. He gave a demonstration of high voltage electricity flowing harmlessly over his body. But in reality, he cheated, because he had used a frequency of 10,000 cycles (10 kHz) at extremely low current and because of the skin effect suffered no harm.

One of Tesla's patents related to a system of lighting using glass tubes filled with fluorine (not neon) excited by H.F.voltages. His workshop was lit by this method. Several years before Wilhelm Roentgen demonstrated his system of X-rays Tesla had been taking photographs of the bones in his hand and his foot from up to 40 feet away using H.F.currents.

More astonishing still is the fact that in 1893, two years before Marconi demonstrated his system of wireless signaling, Tesla had built a model boat in which he combined power to drive it with radio control and robotics. He put the small boat in a lake in Madison Square Gardens in New York. Standing on the shore with a control box, he invited onlookers to suggest movements. He was able to make the boat go forwards and backwards and round in circles. We all know how model cars and aircraft are controlled by radio today, but when Tesla did it a century ago the motor car had not been invented, and the only method by which man could cover long distances was on horseback!

Many people believe that a modification of Tesla's 'Magnifying Transmitter' was used by the Soviet Union when suddenly one day in October 1976 they produced an amazing noise which blotted out all radio transmissions between 6 and 20 MHz. (The Woodpecker) The B.B.C., the N.B.C. and most broadcasting and telecommunication organisations of the world complained to Moscow (the noise had persisted continuously for 10 hours on the first day), but all the Russians would say in reply was that they were carrying out an experiment. At first nobody seemed to know what they were doing because it was obviously not intended as another form of jamming of foreign broadcasts, an old Russian custom as we all know.

It is believed that in the pursuit of his life's ambition to send power through the earth without the use of wires, Tesla had achieved a small measure of success at E.L.F. (extremely low frequencies) of the order of 7 to 12 Hz. These frequencies are at present used by the military for communicating with submarines submerged in the oceans of the world.

Tesla's career and private life have remained something of a mystery. He lived alone and shunned public life. He never read any of his papers before academic institutions, though he was friendly with some journalists who wrote sensational stories about him. They said he was terrified of microbes and that when he ate out at a restaurant he would ask for a number of clean napkins to wipe the cutlery and the glasses he drank out of. For the last 20 years of his life until he died during World War II in 1943 he lived the life of a semi-recluse, with a pigeon as his only companion. A disastrous fire had destroyed his workshops and many of his experimental models and all his papers were lost for ever.

Tesla had moved to Colorado Springs where he built his largest ever coil which was 52 feet in diameter. He studied all the different forms of lightning in his unsuccessful quest for the transmission of power without wires.

In Yugoslavia, Tesla is a national hero and a well-equipped museum in Belgrade contains abundant proof of the genius of this extraordinary man.

CHAPTER TWO

THE BIRTH OF RADIO COMMUNICATIONS

By 1850 most of the basic electrical phenomena had been investigated. However, James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge then came up with something entirely new. By some elegant mathematics he had shown the probable existence of electromagnetic waves of radiation. But it was twenty four years later (eight years after Maxwell's death) that Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894) in Germany gave a practical demonstration of the accuracy of this theory. He generated and detected electromagnetic waves across the length of his laboratory on a wavelength of approximately one metre. His own photograph of the equipment he had set up can be seen in the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

To detect the electromagnetic waves Hertz employed a simple form of oscillator, which he termed a resonator. But it was not sensitive enough to detect waves at any great distance. Before wireless telegraphy could become practicable, a more delicate detector was necessary.

Credit is due to Edouard Branly (1844-1940) of France for producing the first practical instrument for detecting Hertzian waves, the coherer. It consisted of two metal cylinders with leads attached, fitted tightly into the interior of a glass tube containing iron or steel filings. The instant an electric discharge of any sort occurred the coherer became conductive, and if it was tapped lightly its conducting property was immediately destroyed. In practice the tapping was done automatically by a tapper which came into action the moment the coherer became conductive.

In Russia the physicist Aleksandr Popov (1859-1905) had used a coherer while engaged in the investigation of the effects of lightning discharges. He suggested that such discharges could possibly be used for signaling over long distances. Old timers may remember that about 50 years ago Russian amateurs used to send out a QSL card with a drawing of Popov and a caption which claimed that he was 'the inventor of radio'.

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.