Louis Varney.

Louis Varney, G5RV, was born in on June 9, 1911. His father was an electrical engineer and managed a large electrical plant that had world wide connections and was an amateur boxer, his mother was of French descent and related to General Burgogne. He had a brother and a sister.

Louis was raised in a sporting and musical atmosphere. His schooling was a Preparatory School in Golders Green and Hendon Secondary School in London. He joined the Boy Scouts and, being fascinated by the Morse Code, learned signalling and acquired his Signaller's Badge and built his first crystal set by the age of 11.

In 1924 the family moved to Sunbury-on-Thames and Louis attended Hampton Grammar School taking his favourite subjects of French and Spanish (he later learned Italian and Portuguese as well), he also took chemistry, physics and carpentry. At 13 Louis joined the Hampton-on-Thames Sea Scouts. The Scoutmaster, a retired RN Commander, was 'kind but very firm'. He enjoyed his Sea Scouting and became a Patrol Leader, then King's Scout/Troop Leader. Louis obtained his first Artificial Aerial licence, 2ARV, in 1927 aged 16.

At 17 Louis left school and started an apprenticeship in the London maintenance workshop at the firm his father worked for.

In 1930 he was invited to an interview with the Chief Engineer of the BBC and he was also approached by the Engineer in Chief in the Test Department at the Marconi Company's Chelmsford Factory. He was offered the position of Technical Assistant by both companies and he decided to go to the Marconi Company and started training to be an Engineer. In 1933 Louis was offered the position of Chief Instructor of the Marconi College and he spent the next few years teaching Engineer students from all over the world.

In early 1942 Louis requested an interview with the General Manager of the Marconi Company, Admiral Grant (Retired), to request that he be released from his protected service with the Marconi Company, as he wanted to join the Royal Navy. In his own words, this is how the interview went:

"I got a frosty reply from the Admiral; 'How could the Company survive if all its engineers wanted to go off and fight?' At this point in the interview I had a brainwave! I said to him: ‘Admiral Grant, if you were a young man of my age and your country was at war, what would you want to do?’ At this, he patted me on the back and said ‘You win my Boy’".

He was successful with his interview with the Admiralty and was accepted for a Commission, but when it came to the medical it was discovered that he had a hernia. He was advised by the Navy doctor to have an operation as a civilian and then re-apply.

Whilst recovering from the operation he received a phone call from a Major Keen, a world authority on Wireless Direction Finding and author of a textbook of that title (in the fourth edition of the book Louis receives an honourable mention). Louis was invited to attend an interview with Brigadier General Gambier-Parry. He was offered a Commission in the Royal Corps of Signals in a unit for HF Interception and Direction Finding. Louis accepted this post as an assistant to Major Keen and in 1942 he joined the unit at Hanslope Park as a Second Lieutenant, taking charge of the installation, calibration and maintenance of all the HF/DF stations in the UK. He rapidly gained promotion to Captain.

In 1946 Louis was living in a house at Stony Stratford with a garden barely 100ft long and he wanted to install a multi-band HF antenna. Necessity being the mother of invention, he set his mind to the problem and came up with, what is now probably one of the most common HF wire antennas, the G5RV.

December that year found Louis demobbed and, on his return to the Marconi Company, was given the choice of returning to the College or to work at the Great Baddow Research Laboratories. He chose the latter and worked on VHF, UHF and Microwave projects.

In 1953 the Special Event Station, callsign GB2CRA (Chelmsford Radio Amateurs), was the first time that a GB callsign was issued for such purposes. Louis, a Founder Member of the Society, probably through his contacts in the GPO (the Licencing Authority at that time), arranged for the call to be issued. Until that time only the RSGB Headquarters had GB callsigns and they were not very pleased when Louis broke their monopoly. This was probably what started the general issue of such callsigns. The Special Event was for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

In 1954 he was offered the new post of Marconi Company's Latin-American and Caribbean Area Technical and Commercial Representative in Caracas, Venezuela. He accepted and, after a few months of commercial training, left the UK with his wife and son. During his 3 years residence there he made several visits to Marconi agents in his area of operations and was fortunate in obtaining amateur radio licences or special permission to operate as a guest operator at licensed amateur stations in many countries and the Caribbean Islands.

Between 1960 and 1963 Louis was based in Paris and held a position in which he was responsible for overseeing, pre-commissioning testing, then the commissioning testing and acceptance of installations in Italy, Sicily, Greece and Turkey for a Multi-European Defence Communication project. When his contract ended Louis and his wife returned to the UK, but Louis continued his visits to many African countries.

Tragically in 1965, after many years of very happy marriage, his wife died of cancer. Louis was heartbroken and was glad to have a heavy overseas workload to get him over this traumatic period.

In 1966 Nelida, cousin of Tito, CX1BT, with whom Louis had kept a regular sked, told Tito that she was about to visit several European countries including England. He gave her Louis’ address and telephone number and suggested that she should telephone him. She contacted him and they met several times in London for lunch. Romance bloomed and in 1968 Nelida returned to England and she and Louis were married.

He continued working around the world and visited some 75 countries in his lifetime, holding around 55 Amateur Radio callsigns as this picture of a QSL card shows:

Besides Amateur Radio Louis enjoyed painting and gardening. He also collected antique radio equipment and electronic valves.

Louis died aged 89 on Wednesday, 28th June 2000 at his home. His callsign lives on through the antenna he designed in his moment of need. It is interesting to note that Louis made no financial gain from his widely used 'invention'.