er in this book N2DOE describes how a handful of amateurs had
prepared draft legislation in 1937 at the request of Stefanos
Eleftheriou of the Ministry but the outbreak of World War II in
September 1939 had prevented him from taking any action in this
connection.

The island of Crete in southern Greece was first heard on the air
in 1938 when George Zarifis came on 40 metre CW using the callsign
SV6SP. His transmitter consisted of a single metal 6L6 crystal
oscillator with an input of about 7 watts. For reception he used an
American CASE broadcast receiver in which he had fitted a BFO. In a
very short period he had about 500 QSOs.

Forty four years later some of the younger generation of operators
who had not heard of this early activity from Crete allocated the
prefix SV9 to the island. Rather illogically they allocated SV8 to
all the other islands irrespective of their geographical position and
with yet another exception--SV5 for the twelve Dodecanese islands.

General George Zarifis (retired) SV1AA as he is now, had started
playing with 'wireless' a long long time before he went to Crete. In
1921 when he was in the 4th form at school he had bought two kits of
parts from France and put them together with the help of his
fellow-student George Grabinger. The kit consisted of a bright
emitter triode in an oscillating circuit. The heater supply was a 4
volt accumulator, and a dozen or so dry cells, with an earphone in
series, supplied the anode voltage. The tuned circuit consisted of a
coil with a small pressure operated capacitor across it. A carbon
microphone with a dry cell in series was connected to two or three
turns of wire wound over the coil. The assembled kits were tested
close to each other and they worked. Later, when they had connected
random length wire antennas to the circuits the two schoolboys were
able to talk to each other across the 400 metres which separated their
homes. These contacts quite definitely heralded the dawn of amateur
radio in Greece at about the same time as the 1921 Transatlantic tests
were taking place.

On the 1st of September 1939 Hitler's armies invaded Poland.
Great Britain which had a treaty with Poland was compelled to declare
war on Germany two days later on the 3rd, followed by France. Canada
and Australia declared war on Germany the next day. All the radio
amateurs in Athens immediately dismantled their transmitters and
dispersed the components.