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 went to London in 1984 to spend a few weeks with Norman he
told me he had started recording some reminiscences on a tape recorder
about the first radio amateurs in Greece, and he asked me if I would
like to help. As I was one of them myself I agreed. When I left to
return to the U.S.A. he gave me a number of cassettes to transcribe.
Although he speaks fluent Greek without any accent at all, he never
attended a Greek school and couldn't write the memories. He told me
to add anything else I could remember about those pioneering days long
gone by.

So, to start from the beginning, let me say that I was born in
Constantinople (now Istanbul) in Turkey, in October 1910, of Greek
parents. Although we spoke Greek at home I did not go to a Greek
school until I was nine. But I soon moved to the French College where
all the lessons were in French and Greek was only taught as a foreign
language for two hours every afternoon.

My elder brother had subscribed to a French magazine called 'La
Science et La Vie' (Science & Life) and I had become fascinated by a
subject called 'Telegrafie sans fil' (Telegraphy without wire). The
broadcasting of speech and music had not started yet in that part of
the world, though in 1923, a broadcasting station was built in Ankara
the capital of Turkey. Broadcast receivers began to appear in the
shops, either with headphones or large horn loudspeakers, but we never
had one at home.

In 1926 we moved to Athens, Greece, where I went to school.
Strangely enough, as I found out later, that was the year when Norman
also came to Athens for the first time. At school I met Nasos
Coucoulis (later SV1SM and SV1AC) who was also very interested in
wireless. I made a crystal receiver and was able to hear the Greek
Royal Navy station at Votanikos SXA and the old station at Thiseon in
Athens itself, which was still a spark station. There just was
nothing else to hear. I acquired a Philips 'E' type valve and built a
grid-leak detector circuit, but all I got was silence. The four volt
heater drew one amp and I had been trying to get it go