Please may we have a new mode in the database namely ATV?
Homebrew ATV equipment and batteries are miniturising and becoming more innovative that British Amateur Television Club members are starting to operate from hilltops and high places seperated from their cars. G0HIK and friends have already had S2S contacts on 6cm FM ATV in Lakeland.
Since getting my MG status in October 2016, I shifted to a new challenge of building a digital ATV station. I joined the BATC just in time for the Portsdown DATV transmitter project kick-off. With lots of help from chairman Dave G8GKQ and a devotion to reading the instructions on the Wiki, I’ve built a 4-band DATV station in a wooden rack that sits in the boot of my estate car with 2 104Ah standby / cyclic VRLA batteries. It’s massive. From a good site I can Tx and Rx video over a 100 mile path on DVB-S2 putting c. 10W into the beam.
Where the technology is going now is that a Raspberry Pi4, 7" touch screen, USB sound dongle with mic and pi camera will operate a Lime Mini SDR and a Minitiouner receiver. Adding a 70cm or 23cm amp and antenna with some class of Lithium batteries means a single band DATV station would have pack weight around FT-857D transceiver /P station levels. I also a have 6cm FM ATV station built from drone first person video units, a decent uwave coaxial transfer relay and a Gibeon patch antenna.
So ATV mode in SOTA is ripe for encouragment please.
Dear Andy. Short answer without salutation noted. Available modes are discouraging. Why bother building a portable TV station for it to be classed as data or other? What barriers exist to an ATV mode in the database? And after the “time being”?
It’s one of the main cutting edges of the hobby in terms of innovation and is always homebrew. There’s plenty of challenge to which the addition of a recognised mode in SOTA can only add.
kind regards
David M0YDH
Same that exist for scores of other Datamodes and niche modes. As Andy has explained, the database can accept ATV logs already. They go in the Other category, in a similar way to how my FT4 logs go into the DATA category.
I’m pretty sure if you achieve an award solely using ATV, that you could request a certificate to be endorsed to recognise your achievement. That would be pretty special.
Hmmm, sounds like it may, indeed, be time for TV on SOTA, which is often related to a view from above!
Was on in 1956, 432 MHz, with a 5527 iconoscope; great tube, when the sun was out!
Pretty lonely, then; am certain that would no longer be the case, especially with the enthusiasm of SOTA participants.
Ken
Three years ago we had several successful ATV connections over more than 50km in the 5GHz amateur radio band. The equipment consisted of very cheap transmitters and receivers for quadrocopters and directional antennas for WLAN. All in all with a monitor and camera for less than 150 euros per station.
Here is the video from my location, the Bocksberg in the Harz Mountains in northern Germany, unfortunately no longer a valid summit. My brother, DN6DM is helping me with this.
And here the opposite station on the Kronsberg in Hanover with JĂĽrgen, DF9OA and Ben, DK6OT
A second activation from the former summit Steinberg with a short view of my equipment.
