The Short Wave Magazine March, 1977 [antikvár]

AUSTIN FORSYTH O.B.E., G6FO ObituaryAUSTIN ("ANGUS") JAMES ESSLEMONT FORSYTH, who died on January 15, 1977, was born in London on May 11, 1907. At the age of three he moved with his parents to a tea plantation in India where his father was the local doctor; in 1914 he started as a pupil at St. Paul's, Darjeeling, where he stayed for seven years until the family returned to England in 1921. He completed his education at Victoria College, Jersey, and it was whilst there that Austin really became interested in radio communicationsconstructing, experimenting and making it his business to find out ail there was to know about this new and fascinating subject. There were few high-spots and beacons in the country which he hadn't climbed with his gear to see who and what he could hear.It is also a matter of interest, perhaps, that at this time he was a very fine all-round athlete and was a member of the reserve swimming team for the 1926 Olympic Games. He was first licensed in 1928, and in that same year he started his working life underground as a mining engineer in the pits of South Wales (he always had a very great regard for Wales and the Welsh in spite of entirely Irish/Scottish origins).In 1930, G6FO and Jack Hum, G5UM, got to know one another as a result of a mutual interest in developing the then-neglected 160 metre band. They both became members of Group 10A of the Research and Experimental Section of the RSGB and gathered about them a number of like-minded transmitting amateurs whose interest was to see more activity on a band which had become virtually deserted during the great rush to the DX bands of forth and twenty metres. Their objective was to prove that 160 metres had DX possibilities that might not be altogether apparent to those who preferred the easier pickings of 7 and 14 MHz. To this end a series of trans-Atlantic tests were set up to be conducted just before dawn every day during the winter of 1931 and 1932, a long and painstaking slog which had its reward when G6FO was "first across the Pond" on 1 -75 MHz from his site in Newport, Mon. (transmitter: a P650 valve in a self-excited oscillator with a 200v. DC mains supply; receiver: a one-valve detector with a one-valve audio amplifier; aerial was a j-wave long wire). Never will those who participated in those tests forget the bell-like note of W1DBM pinging weakly into their receivers morning after morning, followed sometime later by Signals from W1BB and ultimately others! It is well worth recording that those who got across first G6FO, and soon afterwards his neighbour G5WU at Penarth) did it with a meticulously measured 9-7 watts DC input; this was not just because they feared losing their licences by exceeding the regulation 10 watts: it was a point of honour that if it couldn't be done on the licensed power it was not worth doing at all.G6FO was also one of the pioneers of the 56 MHz band during the 1934-35 period; with one of the first (if not the first) crystal controlled transmitters and an O-V-l receiver he maintained regular contacts from Newport with G5JU in Bristol and G5BY in Croydon.To his great disappointment Austin was forced to1__give up his mining career in 1936 owing to a lung condition (G6FO had for the last 30 years a superb cough which he always said was because his lungs were half-full of South Wales coal dust!). He moved to Appledore, North Devon, and became South Western area representative for National Benzole.From here in North Devon the superiority of West County over-the-sea sites for trans-Atlantic working again became evident, demonstrated both by G6FO and by G6GM, the late Harold Merriman, not far away in Holsworthy, with a high-up site looking straight out over the Atlantic. Any spare moments not connected with amateur radio were occupied in his capacity as the Secretary of the Appledore Lifeboat Association (Austin had a lifelong love of ships and the sea and for him the idea of a holiday was to sail to France and back over the course of a weekend on a friend's yacht). It was during this period 1937-38 that Austin first conceived the idea of starting a magazine to cater specifically for the needs and interests of the radio amateur; he found that he possessed a considerable ability for writing and in fact several articles he had written had already been published in electronic journals of the day. Now a certain "Short Wave Magazine" had been started in 1937 by others with the same aims, but by early 1938 the Magazine was in a distinctly weak and fragile condition; the first Editor, G5GQ, resigned and Austin who felt sure he could make a success of the Magazine, took the plunge and produced his first Editorial in the March 1938 issue. That he did make a success of it is now a matter of amateur-radio history.