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Updated: May 11, 2025
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.
My principal duty was to interpret for Sir Charles, and for his second in command Colonel Prosser. My friend Mr Eleftheriou at the Ministry issued me with a special licence and I came on the air again using my pre-war callsign SV1RX. When the Police Mission closed down in 1948 I came to England and got the callsign G3FNJ which I have now held for over 41 years. Wartime Broadcasts from Cairo.
In 1931 his family, like many other Greek families in Russia, moved to Athens where Takis built a 4-valve transmitter with which he was very active on 40 and 20 metre CW using the callsign SV1AAA. I frequently operated his station myself and when I asked him why he had chosen that particular callsign he gave me what proved to be a truly prophetic answer.
But if he has heard you he will alter the pattern. For the first half minute he will send SV1OE DE G3FNJ and for the ensuing minute and a half he will transmit the letter O which signifies that he has heard your callsign completely and without difficulty i.e. Q5 in the Q Code.
We had lost contact with each other and it was five years later that I found Norman's address in the American callbook. I wrote to him and in his reply he begged me to come on the air again. Owing to a prolonged family illness which culminated in the loss of my beloved wife it was 1980 before I was in the mood to take up amateur radio once again, with my present callsign N2DOE.
When I first began transmitting six years later, having 'discovered' the amateurs, I chose the callsign RX as I had been a listener so long, and also remembering the excitement of listening to G6RX. In 1930 I moved to Athens and became a salesman for RCA radios. My first transmitter was just an electron coupled oscillator using a type 59 output pentode from a radio.
The callsign of the station was SXA. As this was the third transmitter they used the callsign SXA3. The operator, Lt. George Bassiacos, had discovered some telegraphy stations which replied when he called them he had accidentally stumbled upon the amateur 20 metre band!
"Odessa used to have four harbours. The callsign of the W/T station was EU5KAO. I remember it very well because it was my job to take the weather forecasts for shipping which it transmitted regularly." Takis spoke about some amusing misconceptions of that period. When he first completed his receiver and was getting poor results with it he asked a more experienced amateur to look at it.
For instance, Tavaniotis ran his own electrical and electronic business called KONSTAV ELECTRIC so he decided to use "KE" as his callsign. As far as I know the following ten amateurs were active in the Athens area in 1937: 1. Takis Coumbias.....................SV1AAA 2. Menelaos Paidousis.................SV1MP 10.
There I met several amateurs serving with the British forces, and one of them gave me a small military transmitter, so I was able to come on the air again with my old callsign of SV1AZ. There is no doubt that the most active and best known amateur in Greece before World War II was 'Bill' SV1KE. He was active on 20 and 10 metres on AM phone and CW, using his famous McElroy 'bug' to good advantage.
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