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."