Amateur TV interests me because I do a bit of Video work (Live vision switching) in my day job. Here in Sydney we have very little information about ATV but there is real activity. The best way to find out whats happening is to setup a receiver.

So far I have installed a UHF digital TV antenna pointed towards Lawson, and connected that to a cheap Healing setup box. After a bit of fiddling around to work out how to get a custom channel programmed in, I can now receive ATV from the Lawson repeater on 446.500MHz.

HHT651 Receiver tuned for ATV reception.

Questions that need to be answered

  • Can I receive TV from Oakdale?
  • Can I transmit back to the repeater?
  • Can I detect when there is a valid video signal from the receiver, electronically?
  • What sort of Antenna will I need to be able to get into the repeater?