The Dawn of Amateur Radio in the U.K. and Greece: A Personal ViewJoly, Norman F.
History
The Dawn of Amateur Radio in the U.K. and Greece: A Personal View
Joly, Norman F.
Radio broadcasting
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.
5. George Yiapapas (formerly SV1GY).
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.
6. Stefanos Eleftheriou (1895-1979).
Stefanos Eleftheriou, Head of the Telecommmunications section of
the Ministry of Posts & Telegraphs (Greek initials T.T.T.) played a
vital role in the early development of amateur radio in Greece.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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