Hi Les and all,
I would not jump into any kind of advanced purchase or antenna assembly etc on the ISS TV program at this point.
1. It will take considerable time to get the equipment up, installed, tested, verified etc. 2. If the primary use is for ISS school contacts, you are limited to scheduling, ISS visibility at your location etc. 3. Downconverter options are very limited right now since they have to match the DVB-S receiver input frequency. 4. Limited choice of 1m+ dishes with LHCP antenna feeds tuned to the proposed ISS frequencies.
All of this will change over time once more information becomes available and folks/vendors are starting to look into this and more products/tools become available. Also, there might be a more permanent feed of video not just limited to school contacts. We will see.
Will be very interesting to see/hear what info is made available during the Dayton AMSAT forum by Frank Bauer on ARISS.
73, Stefan, VE4NSA
On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 5:09 PM, Les Rayburn les@highnoonfilm.com wrote:
First of all congratulations to the entire Fox team. I know that everyone is excited about the possibility of another FM bird in the near future.
As for Ham-TV, I agree that more information about the ground station requirements would be most welcome. I just managed to win a TechnoTrend S2-1600 HDTV satellite PCI Card on ebay ($60 bucks with shipping) so I hope this is a good start on a complete station.
The next hurdle for me will be assembling a workable antenna and I assume an AZ/EL rotor with automatic tracking? It does seem like information is incomplete considering how close to the go live date we are. I know that this type of digital TV is in wide use in Europe, so maybe some of these folks can lend the yanks a hand?
--
73,
Les Rayburn, N1LF 121 Mayfair Park Maylene, AL 35114 EM63nf
6M VUCC #1712 AMSAT #38965 Grid Bandits #222 Southeastern VHF Society Central States VHF Society Life Member Six Club #2484
Active on 6 Meters thru 1296, 10GHz & Light
______________________________**_________________ Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/**listinfo/amsat-bbhttp://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb