In July 1946, Harry Barnett, a Royal Air Force officer attached to
the Press Department of the British Embassy in Athens obtained an
experimental transmitting licence from the W/T section of the Ministry
of Posts & Telegraphs, with the callsign SV1WE. At that time he was
living in a flat in Athens and could not put up an antenna, so it was
not until June 1947 that he became active.
The terms of his licence were in themselves rather strange, one
might even say quite 'experimental', the final paragraph reading:
"This experimental research must be carried out as
follows:-
1. With a maximum power of 50 watts.
2. In the frequency bands (harmonics) 130, 260, 520 Mc/s.
3. In the frequency bands 28 Mc/s and 56 Mc/s.
4. With the call sign SV1WE."
From June 1947 until April 1948 Harry worked 61 countries, mostly
on phone in the 10 & 20 metre bands, at a time when there were not
many stations on the air--a minute fraction of the millions now
active.
He used a National HRO receiver he had got off a scrap heap which
he modified to take the efficient EF50 valves in the R.F. stages and
EF39s in the I.F.
The transmitter was completely 'home brew', consisting of a metal
6L6 Franklin oscillator on 3.5 MHz followed by two more 6L6s doubling
to 14 MHz. In the final amplifier stage Harry used a Telefunken
pentode, the famous and very efficient RL12P35 which was used in the
German tank transmitters in all stages, oscillator, P.A. and audio
amplifier/suppressor grid modulator. He adopted the same method of
modulation using a record player amplifier and an Astatic crystal
microphone.
W.A.C. was achieved by February 1948 with about 50 watts of R.F.
into a simple dipole antenna. During the ten months that SV1WE was
active 750 QSL cards were sent out. Of the 61 countries worked only 49
were confirmed.
Today (1989) Harry is still regularly on the air under his
original callsign G2AIQ which was first issued to him on the 1st of
January 1938, 51 years ago.