But materials were hard to find and very expensive. Two items one had to buy: valves and headphones. "I asked my friend where he had found the sheet metal to make the plates of the capacitor. He took me to a row of small shops which had a metal- faced ledge below the shop window. The metal was thin and seemed easy enough to remove. We sat on the ledge for a while and when the coast was clear we tore away a section and ran like mad. Later I ruined a pair of my mother's dressmaking scissors cutting out the plates. I used rings of some thick copper wire to space the plates but I could not drill holes in the plates for the spindle so a friend did that for me. I used about 15 plates and to this day I have no idea what the capacity of the finished capacitor was. Some small items for the receiver could be found in a little shop owned by an old man who charged exorbitant prices, so I decided I must go to Moscow for the valve and a single headphone that I needed. "But Moscow was three days and two nights away by train, and it was the middle of winter. So what, you may ask. Like many others I had to travel on the roof of a goods waggon. I took with me a loaf of bread, a piece of cheese and two hard- boiled eggs. My father said I must be mad but he gave me some spending money and his blessing.
"I had eaten my food by the end of the second day so when we stopped at Brensk which is famous for its 'piroushki' I decided to try them. They were kept warm in large metal tins ready for the arrival of the train. There were seven varieties and I had one made with liver and a savoury sauce. "When I arrived in Moscow I went to see the Greek ambassador as I was carrying a letter of introduction from my father who was acting Consul for Greece in Odessa, but it was Saturday and the ambassador's office was closed. I learned later that only foreign establishments closed at the week- end. So I went to look for a cheap hotel. Looking out of the bedroom window I saw a lot of people running in one direction. At that moment a woman brought me a towel and a small bar of soap, so I asked her what was going on outside. She said the butcher near the hotel had just received some liver. Would she buy me some I said. I gave her some money and she returned nearly two hours later with the liver wrapped in newspaper. When I opened it I saw it was horse liver cooked with corn and it had an awful sour smell. I just could not face it, although I was starving by now."
I asked Takis about the shops in Moscow. He said he had found several shops with parts and some made- up receivers in the State owned shops. He learned later that these receivers were made by amateurs because the factories only made equipment for the armed forces. He bought a triode valve called 'MICRO' and was told it had an amplification factor of 7. He wrapped it carefully in cotton wool for the return journey to Odessa. He also bought a dry battery pack which gave 80 volts, and an enormous single headphone for one ear which was ex- army surplus.
When he returned home and began to build his receiver he raided his mother's kitchen to build things like terminals, switches etc. There was an electric bell circuit between the dining room and the kitchen and as they didn't use it his mother said he could dismantle it and use the wire, which was quite long because it went up into the loft and then down again to the kitchen. "I had acquired a small square of bakelite and I used a penknife to make a hold er for the valve, twisting a few turns of wire round the pins as I could find nothing to use as a socket. I had no idea how to connect the various items I made or bought. I had seen a circuit diagram in a French magazine of a detector with reaction. I made the connections by twisting wires together and finally the receiver was complete. The next thing was the aerial. I made an enormous aerial with four parallel wires, like the aerials I had seen on ships. Putting it up was a dangerous operation as our house had a rather steep tiled roof, so I got some friends to help me. Some of them who had 'superior knowledge' told me the downlead must have no bends. I got hold of a stiff copper wire and supported the downlead on two enormous bell insulators as used on telegraph poles. I had to smash a corner of my bedroom window to bring the wire in. I had bought a large knife switch which could be turned over to connect the aerial to ground. I was afraid the large flat top of the aerial would attract thunderbolts. When I finally connected the aerial to the receiver I heard ABSOLUTELY NOTHING." I asked him how he tuned the receiver. He said he had put many taps on the coil and he twisted his antenna to these taps trying various combinations with the tuning capacitor. "All I heard was this breathing noise. I learned later that it was the 'carrier wave' of a broadcasting station without modulation, but I didn't know what that meant. As my friends also heard the same noise I was convinced my receiver was working. We soon found out that the long wave transmitter at Ankara, the capital of Turkey was making test transmissions without modulation. Ankara was one of the first broadcasting stations in that part of the world." Norman: "Regeneration should have produced a whistle."
Takis : "Yes, indeed. And in a peculiar way. When I approached the receiver my hand produced the whistle." Norman: "Hand capacity effect." Takis: "And foot capacity effect as well! When I approached my knee to the metal leg of the work- bench I would lose the station I had been listening to." He said the tuning capacitor he had made was obviously too small and he had to alter the taps on the coil continuously. About three o'clock in the morning during a cold winter night he heard a new sound— the breathing (carrier) noise and a sort of regular ticking. He later found out that it was the new broadcasting station in Vienna, Austria, which transmitted the sound of a metronome throughout the night. 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. Particularly a decent pair of headphones;I had to hold the army headphone to me ear with one hand which gave me pins and needles. For some years I had kept goldfish and pigeons, so I sold them. A friend of mine had gone to sea as a cadet and his ship went abroad, so I asked him to get me a pair of headphones. "I must explain to you that it was no easy matter for a Russian seaman to serve on a vessel which visited foreign ports. First one had to go through the Communist Party sieve and then he was told that if he jumped ship his family would suffer for it. "Anyway, he bought me a lovely pair of Telefunken headphones when the ship berthed at Constantinople (Istanbul) which I have to this day. But not on his first trip, when he was not allowed to go ashore. And it was not the captain who decided who could go ashore. A trusted member of the Party would pick out a group of seamen who could land but they had to stay together the whole time. "I never managed to go abroad. At the Club I had obtained a morse test certificate for 40 letters a minute (8 wpm) in Latin characters and 90 letters (18 wpm) in the Cyrillic alphabet (Russian). To go abroad one had to up- grade to 80 Latin and 120 Cyrillic letters. (16 & 24 wpm). I was put on a small coastal ice- breaker which cleared the river estuaries in the Black Sea.
"The Black Sea is one of the most treacherous inland seas in the world. During the winter its northern shores are frozen whereas the coast of Asia Minor keeps the southern shores relatively warm by comparison. This results in gale force winds and rough seas. Waves follow each other very closely as opposed to the long swell one gets in the Pacific. Ships have to leave port to avoid crashing into each other. "I was about 18 when I first went to sea as a cadet W/T operator. One day when we came out of an es tuary the sea was so rough that the captain decided to turn back. As we turned to starboard we noticed an American freighter behind us heavily laden with wheat and very low down in the water. To our horror it was caught between the crests of two enormous waves and broke in two roughly amidships. Although we were only about half a mile away the freighter sank before we could get to it. We saw a few survivors in the water, but it would have been impossible to put a boat into that treacherous sea. Apart from which a man cannot survive many minutes in a water temperature just above freezing. It was all over in a flash and we returned to Odessa in deep shock. "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. The 'expert' immediately found the first fault: the downlead from the antenna had a bend in it of more than 45 degrees which was quite unacceptable. Secondly, the ground connection to the central heating radiator was no good because it was winter and the radiator was hot so it presented a very high resistance! It must be soldered, he said, to a cold water tap. "I tried everything I could think of to solder the wire to the tap, but to no avail. Then one day I had a brain- wave and I made a stupendous invention! I wrapped a copper strip round the tap and bolted it tightly, together with the ground wire. I was really very proud of myself and wondered if anybody else had ever thought of doing it that way."
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.
"I remember our excitement when we first contacted a station outside Russia. It was a station in Saarbrueken and we were on a wavelength of 42 metres. All the members of the Club sent him our SWL reports and he sent us back his cards and a photograph of his equipment which was published in the Moscow amateur journal and so Odessa became famous. On 42 metres most of our QSOs were with German stations. As a result of this success many young lads joined our club and we 'experts' would explain to them about bends in the aerial downlead and the high resistance of a ground connection to a central heating radiator when the water in it was hot!! The club transmitter consisted of 4 valves in a Hartley parallel push- pull oscillator circuit which we considered to be of relative 'high ower'— 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. I went and saw Mr Eleftheriou at the Ministry and he informed me that there was no way that he could issue me with a transmitting licence, but he thanked me all the same for telling him I had built a transmitter."
Takis continued: "I would like you to notice these two QSL cards I received in 1933. I1IP wrote on his card 'I am on the air since 1924 but you are the first SV station I have heard'. And the British listener BRS1183 wrote 'Dear old man, very pleased to report your signals. Are you the only active station in SV?' I think those comments speak for themselves." Norman: "Had you not heard about Tavaniotis, who had also emigrated from Russia?"
Takis: "No. It was you who took me to the basement shack and introduced me. I remember how I gaped when I saw the 150 watt transmitter Bill had built." Takis then described how he had heard a distress signal on his home- made receiver. It was in a language he could notunderstand so he called his father, who was quite a linguist, to listen. 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. 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. He said the vessel in distress had been bound for Piraeus, and sure enough the salvage tug located it, but when they approached it there was no sign of fire as it had been put out, before any of the animals could be harmed. But the engine room had been amaged, so the tug towed the vessel into harbour. 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.
"I was asked to put it together again by the owner who wanted to sell it to the ship to shore W/T station where they did not have a short wave capability yet. When I was shown the parts I was horrified to see that there was no circuit diagram or instructions of any sort. It took me more than a month to figure it all out. The transmitter was of French manufacture and consisted of two enormous triodes in a Hartley oscillator circuit. When I got it to work it was installed at the Naval Wireless station at Votanikos, where the Director, Captain Kyriakos Pezopoulos used it for experimental transmissions. There were already two other transmitters there, one on Long Waves and one on 600 metres. 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! With a transmitter supplied with unrectified A.C. at 400 Hz. and a power output of several kilowatts, no wonder contacts with any part of the world were easy. When Captain Pezopoulos met Bill Tavaniotis the latter suggested that if the 'experimental' transmissions were to continue
in the amateurs bands, the callsign should be altered to SX3A. Thousands of successful contacts were made as it was the beginning of sunspot cycle 16, a very good one as old timers will know. If anyone reading this has a QSL card from SX3A it would be appreciated if he would donate it to the Technical Museum in Greece."
(Takis Coumbias died suddenly of a heart attack in September 1987.)
