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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.
It appeared that the vessel had caught fire as it was approaching the port of Piraeus, south of Athens. The captain of the ship said their predicament was complicated by the fact that they were transporting a large circus, with many wild animals. Takis ran to the nearest Police station and told his story, but was greeted practically with derision.
This would have been about 1926. I asked Takis about school. "In spite of the late nights listening I never missed a day at school. My father was the Chairman of the School Committee and I couldn't let him down. But I had to earn some pocket money to pay for the bits a pieces I needed.
"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.
When I met Takis in his office in May 1983 I told him I was thinking of writing a small book about the history of amateur radio in Greece before it was too late so many of the old timers had already passed away. Little did we both suspect at the time that he also would not live to see the finished project. I asked him how far back he could remember.
Ibid. p. 29. No. Edited by John Jamieson, D.D. F.R.S.F. &c. &c. Now takis James his waige Towart Dowglas, his heretage, With twa yemen, for his owtyn ma; That wes a symple stuff to ta, A land or a castell to win.
The club transmitter consisted of 4 valves in a Hartley parallel push-pull oscillator circuit which we considered to be of relative 'high power' perhaps all of 10 watts." Takis continued: "In 1930, my family, like many other families of Greek origin, moved to Athens. I built a cw transmitter using four Philips valves.
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.
How could a young lad like him know there had been a fire on a ship which was not even in sight of the shore? Anyway, somebody was brought to the station and the officer said "Go with this man." Takis was taken to the coast at Palaio Faliro where he boarded a salvage tug, and they set out to sea.
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