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"Three days earlier, however, when I was not at home, Costas SV1DH had established the first TEP contact between Greece and South Africa when he contacted ZS6DN. As you know, my location is a mere 10 kilometres north of SV1DH's. Norman: "Were all these contacts only on the key?"
He had replied that the two frequencies behaved in a very different manner, but there was no harm in trying. He got ZS6PW and ZS6DN interested in the idea, particularly ZS6DN who had much better aerials and a very good QTH. He was the one who stood the better chance of being heard in Greece. We arranged a schedule of transmitting and listening every evening.
Amateurs in Malta, Italy, France and Spain soon began to participate in the tests, as well as amateurs in other areas of South Africa. The QTH of SV1AB is in a suburb 10 kilometres north of SV1DH's so George's contacts with the stations in Africa always had that edge on them. In South Africa Dave Larson ZS6DN had set up a beacon which was first heard in Athens by SV1AB in February 1979.
Within a few days ZS6DN had QSOs with SV1DH and SV1AB. The latter contact was a world distance record via the F-regions of the ionosphere because of the extra distance involved owing to the locations of the two Greek stations, as mentioned in the previous paragraph.
I returned to the cross-band frequency on 10 metres which we used regularly for 28/50 MHz QSOs and managed to contact a station in South Africa who was very far away from ZS6DN but who kindly offered to QSP a message by telephone. He was told that ZS6DN had gone out but would be back soon. I was terrified that the opening would not last long enough.
5B4WR ZE2JV 144.1 10/04/78 17.40 5,800 First T.E.P. contact between Europe and Africa. SV1AB ZE2JV 144.1 12/04/78 18.00 6,260 First Greek distance record on 144 MHz. SV1DH ZS6DN 144.1 13/02/79 18.15 7,120 New world distance record on 144 MHz. SV1DH ZE2JV 432.3 20/03/79 18.20 6,250 First reception of 432 MHz signals between Europe and Africa.
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