The Sky-Eye II Amateur Television Payload

    By John Rehwinkel KG4L
On Saturday, September 15, 2001, John Rehwinkel, KG4L, demonstrated his ATV payload at the monthly meeting of the Loudoun Amateur Radio Group in Leesburg, Virginia. This is a full-motion color capability with full GPS Lat-Long, altitude, and direction, plus transmitter identification. In a message to the L_A_R_G Reflector, John describes his system; this information is used here with photographs I took that morning. This was a very cool demonstration. Several LARG members also demonstrated their receiving capabilities. I hope to add photographs of received signals soon. Thanks John for a great effort. Regards, Norm Styer - AI2C
Camera The camera itself was an X10 Xcam, which is no longer sold. I had got it in trade for an Anaconda camera, which I bought for $39.98 from the folks at www.x10.com: http://www.x10.com/products/x10_sc18a.htm The Anaconda model will work just as well as the Xcam, the difference being that it has a 60 foot cord. This is a color camera with sound, which runs on 12VDC.

As it happens, the price I paid for the Anacondas was an introductory price, the current price (a week later) is $49.99.
GPS Receiver I obtained the GPS receiver (yellow unit in upper right) from Tom WB3AKD, but they're commercially available as refurbished units from the original manufacturer for $50 apiece. It's tricky to find on their website (I expect they'd rather you buy their new gear), but the information is here:

http://www.delorme.com/user/gpstripmate.asp




Caption Card The GPS captioner (which also puts the club callsign into the video stream) is made by Intuitive Circuits: http://www.icircuits.com/osd-gps.htm
However, I obtained it from the folks at P.C. Electronics reachable at www.hamtv.com. They don't have individual pages for their products, but you can download their catalog (or individual pages) in PDF format from their website. The GPS captioner (with ID) is their part number OSD-GPS (catalog page 7), $119.


Video Transmitter The video transmitter is a Videolynx (also obtained from WB3AKD), and is also available from P.C. Electronics. It is their part number 434 (catalog page 5), $99.

Another possibility for a transmitter is this one: http://www.northcountryradio.com/atv12mk2.htm
It can produce up to 2 watts, and operate on different ATV frequencies by changing crystals (which would allow me to use my 434MHz mini-beacon for telemetry).
Antennas The antenna is a UHF J-pole made using the instructions in this (excellent, but long) web page describing how they work: http://free.prohosting.com/~w0rcy/Jpole/jpole.html  I condensed all this into a C program that computes the lengths for you: http://www.vitriol.com/ftp/jpole.c

I had intended (and still intend) to make a crossed-moxon turnstyle, as described in a recent issue of QST.
An earlier article on ballooning (January 1999 QST) mentioned a mini-wheel by Olde Antenna Labs as good for ATV use. There's a picture of one of these mounted on a glider at: http://members.aol.com/hgjohn1/atv/

Other Stuff The remaining parts were from my junkbox.

Receiver Downconverter The downconverter board also available from P.C. Electronics I'm using is their part number TVC-2G (catalog page 2), $49.

Hope this information is useful to somebody!
    Best Regards, John Rehwinkel KG4L

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