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.