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.)

2. Pol Psomiadis N2DOE (formerly SV1AZ).

The text which follows was written by Pol N2DOE of Bergenfield NJ.

Norman Joly and I first met in 1935 when I started working with
Bill SV1KE as his radio mechanic. Norman was then working for the
local agents of RCA selling broadcast receivers. The last time I saw
him before the war, was in September 1939. I was still working with
Bill and I went to the British School of Archaeology in Athens to
deliver a National NC 100 with a Spiderweb all-band antenna. Norman
had been recruited to set up a monitoring station for the Press
Department of the British Embassy, which had been moved to a building
in the grounds of the school. 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. We had lost
contact with each other