CAT 14 - program of events

Announcements and Discussion about the BATC's Flagship Event and General Meeting for 2014
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g8gtz
Posts: 1733
Joined: Wed Apr 07, 2010 6:26 pm

CAT 14 - program of events

Post by g8gtz » Mon Aug 25, 2014 9:45 am

Plans are fairly well advanced for CAT14 – in addition to the talks program we have some traders coming along and have confirmed the following activities / demos. If you want a table or display area to show anything related to Television (professional or amateur), just let us know before the event.

• SMD workshops organised by Kevin G3AAF – bring along your project you want to make or Kevin will have some practice PCBs available.

• Display of vintage camera and other professional broadcast equipment by Brian, G8GQS.

• Mike G3LYP will be bringing the UK microwave group stand. As well as publishing the quarterly Scatterpoint magazine and promoting activity on bands above 1 GHz, the group also run an SMD chip bank. The bank free SMD components to all group members and Mike will be able to take your £6 annual subscription and in return give you instant access to free SMD components.

• Dave, G8ADM, and Peter, G3PYB, will be demonstrating a working prototype of the DATV equipment for the Low VHF bands which they hope to get an experimental NoV to operate. Remember Alexander Palace was seen in VK, so some DATV DX records may be about to get shattered!

• Microwave DATV demonstration area where the GB3HV group will be showing a DTX1 driving a modified Airspan unit to generate 3.4 GHz DATV ready for when they receive their NoV.

• Colin, G4KLB, will be showing his ISS HAMTV set up and probably a load of other interesting ideas.

• Mike G8LES will be running the fix it area – we will have a range of RF test equipment including 22 GHz spectrum analyser, 2 GHz signal generator, RF power meters, oscilloscopes and general test equipment. There will also be a DATV signal generator covering 70cms and 23cms with calibrated signal level output to test receivers. Advanced notice of anything you intend to bring would help us to be prepared.

• Bring and buy sale where members can have a table free of charge to sell all those unwanted gems that you bought at the last BATC convention! Once again advanced notice if you would like a table would be useful.

• BATC shop will be there with all our current stock including DTX1, DATVexpress boards and 70cms upconverters

• Laurence, 2E0DTX, will be there to answer any questions on the DTX1 and will be showing the PC application to upgrade your DTX1 to the latest firmware – bring yours along and Laurence will upgrade it for you. He will also be showing a range of new filters and amplifiers for 70cms and 23cms designed to work with the DTX1.


As you can see, we have a lot planned and really need some more volunteers to help out on site – please contact if you can help over the weekend.

There will be free tea and coffee available all weekend and we have arranged for sandwiches and other cold snacks to be available on Saturday and Sunday.

It is intended that we will be streaming all the lectures and the EGM / BGM on BATC.TV. However, the network in the school is locked down tight and we cannot use it for streaming. We will therefore be using a 70cms DATV link from the school to G8GTZ’s remote station where it will be streamed over a 5Km 5.6 GHz WiFi back to his home and out on the BT infinity connection. This should prove a reliable connection all weekend and make the proceedings available to members who cannot attend, but we would urge all members to attend if at all possible, particularly on the Sunday.

We will organise an informal dinner on the Saturday night at the Apollo hotel where most people are staying – if interested, make sure you put your name down on the list which will be circulating during Saturday lunchtime.

Finally directions to the school and hotel can be found at Google map link showing the various hotels and venue: https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit? ... 1nh6JuLwUs and we will be trying to monitor 144.750 throughout the event in case anyone gets really lost!

CAT14 talks program

This is the final draft, but we have room to include other talks on Television, professional or amateur, or on any topics of general interest to members.
CAT14 prom v1.jpg
CAT14 prom v1.jpg (183.48 KiB) Viewed 8446 times

g8gtz
Posts: 1733
Joined: Wed Apr 07, 2010 6:26 pm

CAT 14 - DigiThin!!

Post by g8gtz » Wed Aug 27, 2014 7:58 am

Brian G4EWJ has taken the wraps off his latest project and so the subject of his presentation and demo at CAT14 will be the F5OEO very narrow band project and in particular the DATV plugin board he is developing for the Raspberry PI:

The Raspberry Pi still needs to output data to another modulator / serialiser device, so I thought it would be more convenient to make a plug-in pcb for the RPi which will process the data and generate the RF. Coupled with a lithium battery, the idea is to make a completely self contained, portable, narrowband DATV transmitter for 146MHz or 437MHz.

For full details of this exciting project see http://www.batc.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=3912

Should be one not to miss!

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