were the two leading stations in the U.S.A. topping all
the achievement tables. But W6AM had a slight advantage; he had
bought a site previously belonging to Press Wireless which had 36
rhombics whereas W1FH always operated with his simple Yagi at 60 feet.

Another station with which we had frequent contacts on 20 metres
was W2IXY owned by Dorothy Hall. One night Dorothy gave us a big
surprise. In the course of a QSO she told us to listen carefully.
Suddenly the three or four of us in SV1KE's shack heard our voices
coming back from New York. Dorothy had recorded our previous
transmission on a disc. A few days later we turned the tables on her.
We had hastily put together some recording equipment and played back
her transmission. Dorothy said that was the first time she had heard
her voice coming from 5,000 miles away. I must explain that at that
time (about 1933) home recording was a novelty even in the U.S.A.
Recording on vinyl tape was invented by Telefunken towards the end of
the war in 1945. Today even little children play with cassette
recorders, and the latest revolutionary home recording system invented
by Japan DAT (Digital Audio Tape) provides high fidelity studio
quality with no background noise; really a 'super' version of the mini
cassette recorder.

In Athens we continued to operate even through the Dictatorship of
General Metaxas which began with a coup in August 1936, but not
without some problems. The main target of the infamous Maniadakis,
Minister of the Interior under Metaxas, were of course the Communists,
but the handful of radio amateurs also came under suspicion of being
subversive elements. Things got worse, in fact, when the newspaper
ESTIA owned by K. Kyrou, published an article blaming 'amateurs' for
being responsible for interference to short wave reception. I must
explain that the writer was referring to the dozens of pirate low
power broadcasting stations operating in the medium wave (broadcast)
band. Regretably, I have to place on record that owing to the late
development of broadcasting and official recognition of amateur radio
in Greece, the word 'amateur' in the minds of the general public
embraces CBers, pirates of all kinds operating on medium waves and
recently in the FM band, and genuine licensed amateurs as well. So,
as I was working in the basement workshop at SV1KE's one afternoon,
three of Maniadakis' plain-clothes men turned up and said they had
come to se