Matt began by looking as some of the older Amateur TV formats and frequencies, including analog and digital. He pointed out that analogue was easy to start out with, but the quality was often not up to standard. He said that all amateur bands above 432MHz were available for ATV including 70cm, 13cm, 3.4GHz and 10GHz. Experimental NoVs are available for 71MHz and 146MHz.

He pointed out that analog was widespread till 2015, mostly on 70cms, 8MHz AM, 23cms 16MHz FM, and 13cms 16MHz FM. Some FPV drone gear is still using analog on 5.6GHz because it’s easy to start with but limited and now there are fewer analog repeaters.

Digital is now predominant using DVB-S/DVB-S2 standards, originally for satellite TV. Various modulation modes i.e. QPSK, 8PSK, 16APSK, and 32APPSK. The Coding/FEC options are 1/3 up to 9/10. MPEG transport streams, modern compression. H264, H265, hardware and software encoding and symbol rates 66ks/s to 4Ms/s

Modulation represents digital data as symbols. Such as: Symbol rate = base data rate + FEC. TX Data rate = bits x symbol rate. Higher symbol rate means faster transfer but wider bandwidth. 333Ks/s to 1Ms/s common in DATV.

As for operation, there is Simplex for contesting, /p. and Repeaters such as GB3TV at Dunstable Downs on 23cm and GB3TZ at Caddington on 13cm, plus there are 30 plus more around the UK. Satellite can also be used on QO-100 Wideband (Geo stationary)

Looking back in time, some might remember the lift in the 70s and 80s where 44-55MHz analog signals could be seen worldwide. Rob M0DTS used 100W on 29.250MHz with a 3 element yagi and worked a 5,500km path!

Matt went on to describe a “basic” set up and other more specialised equipment.

He pointed out a good source of information,,The British Amateur Television Club and AMSAT-UK. A Q&A session followed with lots of questions and answers.

my thanks to Matt for providing the necessary data to write this piece.