George Yiapapas is a Greek amateur who was very active for over
25 years yet nobody seems to have heard of him. In 1935 George and
his father Costas built a one-valve transmitter using a type 59
pentode with suppressor grid modulation, and succeeded in contacting
most of the world with this QRP rig. The electron coupled oscillator
could not have put more than 4 or 5 watts into the antenna.
After the war George went to Jordan in 1956 to work for Cable &
Wireless the English company which operated the old Eastern Telegraph
cable network. He used the callsign JY1GY for about a year and was
then transferred to Tripoli in the Kingdom of Lybia, during the reign
of King Idris, where he obtained an official licence with the call
5A3TA.
In 1960 he was again transferred, this time to Kuwait, where he
operated the equipment of Mohamet Behbehani 9K2AM for over six years.
George now has a small shop in Piraeus, the port of Athens and is no
longer active on the amateur bands.