W6CX amateur television ATV transmissions from Byron Airport for Mission 7 of Parachute Mobile

As part of the Parachute Mobile program, this was viewing the output from a TV transmission from Byron Airport to Mt. Diablo W6CX amateur television repeater. Intention is to re-transmit air to ground video from a skydiver so it can be viewed by other amateur radio people in the SF bay area, especially those at Santa Clara Marriott during Pacificon 2011.

UPDATE (8-26-11): I found out W6CX uses AM mode, my xmtr and recvr are FM. This explains the off-sync and noisy video signal.

I used a 2watt Videolynx ATV transmitter on 1289 MHz. I'm not sure how effective my uplink was, I heard another station viewing W6CX on 1241 MHz saw the same video as I was receiving. Regarding effectiveness, many operators that uplink to W6CX probably use older ATV transmitters, i.e. Wyman brand which probably has cleaner sync pulses.

I received W6CX downlink using a 1.2GHz ATV receiver by Mobicomm (ebay seller gnupic). When station ID from W6CX came on the air, my receiver could not horizontally sync to it. Output from the ATV receiver was connected to the composite input of a Sansui TV set with a built-in VHS deck. This is some of what I recorded. Received signal was strong, it is the video signal that is noisy.

Tail end of this video was recordings of other activities of Mission 7 (I didn't spend time to edit this portion went I created a mp4 file).

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Parachute Mobile is a collection of amateur radio people and skydivers combining the two hobbies (though not all members are skydivers yet). Jumpers carry a variety of gear: FM and SSB transceivers, 20 meter PSK beacon, APRS transceivers with GPS and physiological telemetry. APRS I-Gates and other specialized airborne and ground equipment are also deployed.

Parachute Mobile website at http://parachutemobile.wordpress.com

Crew for Mission 7 was:

Mark Meltzer, AF6IM, Jumper 1
Michael Gregg, KF6WRW, Jumper 2
Rob Fenn, KC6TYD
Ray Rogoway, W6RAR
Bernhard Hailer, AE6YN
Michael Pechner, NE6RD
Michael Wright, K6MFW

Category:

Science & Technology

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• Parachute
• Mobile
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• Bay
• Area
• Skydiving
• AF6IM
• KF6WRW
• KC6TYD
• W6RAR
• AE6YN
• NE6RD
• K6MFW
• W6CX
• Mount
• Diablo
• amateur
• radio
• club
• ATV
• television