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After my military training I started work at the Lambropoulos Brothers shop in the Metohikon Tameion building. It was there that I made the acquaintance of Takis Coumbias, who had come to Greece from Russia with his family. Takis had had eight years experience of amateur radio in Russia, and he told us how the radio clubs operated under the strict supervision of the Communist Party.
Two are of particular interest: the account given to me by Takis Coumbias formerly SV1AAA of the early days of amateur radio in Russia and the story of the Greek broadcasts from Cairo, Egypt during the German/Italian occupation of Greece in World War II. Nearly all the photographs of the period were taken by the author.
What Coumbias didn't know was that by law he was entitled to a proportion of the salvage money, and he never got anything. Another incident involving a small yacht which belonged to a friend of Takis' led to an interesting assignment. The yacht was considered to be not seaworthy any more, and a W/T transmitter it carried was dismantled completely by an electrician who knew nothing about wireless.
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.
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.
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