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At the time of writing four of the original pioneers in the Athens area are alive and three of them are currently active on the H.F. bands. Athanassis 'Takis' Coumbias has QSL cards addressed to him dated 1929 when he was a short wave listener in Odessa, Russia with the SWL callsign RK-1136.
If I have also heard your callsign completely I will send G3FNJ for half a minute followed by RO for a minute and a half, which means that I have also received your callsign and your O. And you will reply RO 73 which concludes the successful contact. "There are one or two other letters that can be used.
Three years later, in 1935, I moved to Tavaniotis' workshop as his mechanic. 'Bill' had built an AM and CW transmitter with an output of 150 watts. He used the callsign SV1KE. We had regular contacts with George Moens SU1RO in Cairo, Egypt. George is still active in his native land of Belgium with the callsign ON5RO in Brussels. He should be well into his 80s by now.
In actual fact this is what happened: legislation was enacted 40 years later and the callsign SV1AAA was officially allocated to Nikita Venizelos after 54 years had elapsed! The recipients of these three licences were Costas 'Bill' Tavaniotis SV1KE, Aghis Cazazis SV1CA and Nikos Katselis SV1NK. As there were no relevant regulations the choice of callsign was left to the individual operators.
Today 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. George Yiapapas is a Greek amateur who was very active for over 25 years yet nobody seems to have heard of him.
After the end of the war I saw him again in 1948 in the uniform of a Superintendent of Police working in the British Police Mission to Greece. He told me he had obtained a special licence and was back on the air with his pre-war callsign SV1RX. In 1951 I emigrated to Brazil where I stayed for 17 years and then came to the U.S.A. in 1968, where I have been ever since.
The island of Crete in southern Greece was first heard on the air in 1938 when George Zarifis came on 40 metre CW using the callsign SV6SP. His transmitter consisted of a single metal 6L6 crystal oscillator with an input of about 7 watts. For reception he used an American CASE broadcast receiver in which he had fitted a BFO. In a very short period he had about 500 QSOs.
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.
He was successful whereas Nikolis went to the Ministry of Posts & Telegraphs where he ended up as Director-General many years later. The MARCONI COMPANY of England had built an impressive wireless station for the Greek Royal Navy at Votanikos, a suburb of Athens. There was a transmitter which operated on 600 metres and a larger one on long waves above 2,000 metres which used the callsign SXA.
I asked Takis if he had done any transmitting from home. "We amateurs of foreign origin were not allowed to own transmitters but we could operate the club station under close supervision by the Party member who was always present. My own SWL callsign was RK-1136 as you can see from the QSL card I received from EU5DN in 1929.
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