Latest ATV Activity...

GB3KM

Our Local ATV repeater at Kirk Merrington, Co.Durham. Serving the North East!

Dual input repeater mode seen below and coverage map.

Activity 2011

I will be active for the Summer Fun ATV Contest this June from the North Yorkshire moors 360m ASL..

Please remember to call in!

Activity 2010

I was out for both the ATV contests in 2010, the best being the Summer Fun event in June where there was lots of stations active for the first time since i stated participating in the contests!

I have some screenshots to add here sometime soon.

At the back end of 2010 there were some excellent tropo ducting conditions and various stations were worked on 23cm ATV..

In October 2010 I saw video from Tony M0ATV on 23cm ATV, he was peaking up to P4 over the 130km path across the Pennines, quite amazing!

More DX in October 2010:

G4KLB > 400KM !!

Analogue

And in Digital!

GB3UD ~160km seen as normal under good lift conditions:

New repeaters seen for the first time at my home location:

GB3VL ~150km _________________________GB3ZZ ~280km

Lets hope 2011 brings some more good conditions!

Portable activity 2009

BATC Repeater contest 21-22 March

I decided to go out portable on the Saturday Afternoon/Evening to see if i could work a few people through GB3VL repeater from the usual portable site on the NY Moors IO94LI. I managed to get setup on site quite quickly with 23cm and a good 2m talkback setup.

GB3VL was a lovely picture as usual but after a few calls on 144.750 it was looking dissapointing! Not long after Bob, G7AVU called in and we made contact easily on 23cm TV with P4-P5 video over 120km. Pat G4EKD called in and also Dave G6SKO, but they were quite weak on 2m. I transmitted to Dave and he did see a weak signal from me near Derby over 140km away but it was not resolved into a readable picture.. he did see me FB through VL at the same time though :-)

After teh simplex QSO's int eh afternoon i had a tune about on tv and found GB3EY just by chance. I have tried to receive GB3EY from this site but never managed it before, It was a nice surprise! saying that i didn't get any replies..... Hopefully GB3EY will be visible next time i'm out and we can find someone active and have a qso through it.

Here are a few photo's of signals...

These were all captured from the camcorder video so apologies for the quality!

10GHz ATV test 115.87km - March 09

IO94MJ - IO85XF

On Wednesday 18th March Eddie G0EHV and myself decided to do a portable atv test over quite a long distance, both ends were using dishes and modified LNB for rx, Eddie was using ~10mW into a dish for tx and i was using ~500mW.

We were using 2m with vertical antenna on the car for talkback and signals were moderate S5, We setup the tv gear and i managed to find Eddie's signal no problem in seconds on 10GHz @P5! That's how it should work!

I setup my tx and we acheived P5 both ways quite easily

The path between the two sites...

2008 B.A.R.A.C Rally!

This year's Trip to The Bishop Aukland Club Rally was a bit more organised than the last!

We hoped to transmit live video from the rally through GB3KM and out onto the internet via the webstream but hit a couple of problems..hihi

A l ocal video sender stopped us receiving the repeater on 13cm so we decided to just transmit in on 23cm and receive using the webstream, this did work reasonably well but the hitch was that the transmitter was located ~50m away from the display.. we used a 5.8GHz video sender to link the camera into the transmitter which did work but the link suffered lots of breakup from passing people!

2007 B.A.R.A.C Rally

On the 2nd of December Eddie, Clive and Myself setup a stall/Display for GB3KM to try and get a few more people interested in ATV. We did plan to have a live link to the room from KM but getting a signal into that metal building proves a bit of a problem..hi

Next year we plan to have live access to the repeater from the rally using an outside relay setup.

The Rally was a good event and we did have a reasonable mount of interest in the repeater so lets hope that someone else joins us on 144.750 soon!!

The stall we put on did very well and we all went a way quite pleased with the day.

here are some photos:

Tropo 22-24 December 2006

Finally some good conditions return this year...lets hope for some more in 2007!

All of the stations worked on ATV were through GB3YT/YV/YX repeater, this time i was transmitting into GB3YV so had look-through on GB3YT, much better...it was surprising how much better the conditions were on 13cm!

Here are all the stations heard and worked... Click on the photo's for videos!

Mike, G0DPS in on GB3YV_________________Bob, G7AVU in on GB3YT

Ray, M0MLJ in on GB3YX_______________F8DYG/68 seen p4 in GB3YT Good dx!

PI6ANH in GB3YV and also in GB3KM _________GB3UD direct on 23cm, no activity!

Testing Pre-emphasis on transmitted video.

A few months back i added standard CCIR pre-amphasis to my 13cm transmissions and i have just got around to testing what the difference is.....

Here are some screenshots of the results while transmitting through GB3KM repeater. It shows the pre-emphasis makes quite a difference, more than i expected! the images show up a lot sharper and have much more contrast.

Without pre-emphasis ______________________________With pre-emphasis

Some more tropo during July 2006

Worked a station through GB3YT G1EFF - Tony

Not much worked on 23cm Narowband, Mainly only LA4SHF/B on 1296.890.

Click images for video clip (5Mb each)

29th January to 2nd Feb 2006 Tropo!

New repeater seen today at P4: GB3UD, only ever seen it once before. Distance =165km,

Even though it was P5 at times i could not access on 1249, yet i was opening GB3YT while trying!

GB3YT also seen but conditions not as good as the last opening, PI6ANH and an ON? station seen at P3 through YT (YV input) most of the opening.

Tropo May 2006 -

Only a slight enhancement compared to the last opening!

This time i only managed to work G6SKO via GB3YT - Sorry for the poor photo - Taken with my mobile phone!

24th November 2005 Tropo!

Quite a lift on the 23rd and 24th on most bands even 10GHz was good! Worked a few people via GB3YT: G3KJX, G4LRS and EI2HR and also worked GW8ASD on 23cm SSB who was a fantastic signal!

Some pictures:

EI2HR (click for video)________________________G4LRS

G3KJX into YV on 13cm________________Myself into GB3YT, thanks for the photo Mike!

GB3YT

first seen at P5 (+ RADAR!) at My location 88.5KM from the repeater late on 13th July 2005, and then early AM on the 14th.

With my 2M Dish i can see GB3YT all the time at about P1 and access with a P1, but still need some tropo to work through it properly.

View from GB3YT - Nice!