Boulder TV Repeater's Repeater: July, 2018

TV Rptrs Rptr-1.doc (kh6htv, 7/7/2018) p.
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BOULDER TV
Repeater's
REPEATER
July, 2018
We had a successful ATV BBQ/Potluck in June to welcome Mike, WA6SVT, to town. It
was our first ever social, face-to-face, get-together of the Boulder area TV hams. As a
result, I see us coming together more as an informal club. I would thus like to start a
newsletter for us to share items of mutual interest. Hence this first issue. To keep costs
to Zero, it will be strictly in electronic, .pdf format and distributed via e-mail. I solicit
input from all of you as what you would like to see in the newsletter.
ATV-BBQ: In June, I got word from Mike Collis, WA6SVT, that he and his
family were taking a cross country trip to visit family in the mid-west and he would like
to stop by Boulder on their way back home to S. California. Mike is a broadcast
engineer for the CBS anchor station in Los Angeles. He is the former technical editor of
our national ATV magazine, Amateur Television Quarterly. He is also the driving force
and guru of the Amateur Television Network (ATN) in the south-west USA.
Knowing Mike would be passing thru Boulder, I felt this would be an ideal opportunity
for him to meet the Boulder ATV community. Thus, Janet and I invited the group to our
QTH for a pot-luck / BBQ. It was held on Saturday evening, the 16th of June. The
weather was threatening earlier in the afternoon, but was perfect for our BBQ. We had a
great turnout of hams and spouses with about 24 in attendance. Unfortunately, I forgot
to take a group photo. (next time ! ).
I asked Mike to give us an informal talk about ATN. Everyone came away from it with a
great appreciation of the extremely complex inter-linked ATV repeater network, Mike
and his fellow hams in California, Nevada and Arizona have but together. We also gained
a better appreciation of the unique RF issues and challenges they faced in a major
metropolitan area like Los Angeles. We realized we are lucky in Boulder being able to
do some DTV technical things that would be impossible to do in RF saturated LA.
BCARES & TV: BCARES has sent out a call for ATV volunteers to help out again
this summer with the Dead & Co concerts. These are the BIG rock concert events this
summer in the CU football stadium. There will be two concerts held on Friday and
Saturday nights, 13th & 14th of July. BCARES has assisted the CU Police Dept with
crowd security for these Dead & Co concerts for the past two summers. It is a long work
assignment starting at 3 in the afternoon and lasting until about midnight. The rock
concert crowd will be a considerably different clientele than seen at CU football games.
TV Rptrs Rptr-1.doc (kh6htv, 7/7/2018) p. 2 of 6
It consists of a lot of really old, tie dyed, pot-head, hippies, plus younger ones also. Matt,
K0DVB, says "The cameras will be run outside the stadium only - so gas masks are not
required ! ! " Use your imagination for what gas will be present. The rock music sound
inside the stadium is deafening and it is impossible to hear your HT, even with
headphones, while inside the stadium.
BCARES will be staffing a couple of portable TV camera/transmitters outside the

stadium monitoring the crowds coming in and out of the stadium. The pictures will be
received in the CU police command post. BCARES is now using hi-definition, digital,
DVB-T transmitters on the 70cm band. They have the capability of using up to four
transmitters simultaneously on all four adjacent channels, ( 57, 58, 59 & 60). BCARES
has their own TV equipment and volunteers do not need to bring any TV equipment, just
your hand-held, 2 meter, radio, your BCARES badge, hat and shirt. CU PD supplies box
lunches for volunteers. For the rock concert, Matt prefers experienced and trained ATV
operators.
BCARES will also be providing similar TV coverage for all of the CU home football
games. BCARES has been providing this service to CU since 1995. Game dates are:
9/15, 9/28, 10/6, 10/27, 11/10 & 11/17.
If you can help BCARES for either the rock concerts and / or the football games, please
contact Matt Holiday, K0DVB, the BCARES video coordinator. His e-mail is:
[email protected]
REPEATER STREAMING: For the past year +, Don, N0YE, has been doing
streaming on the internet of the Thursday afternoon ATV nets. His streams have been
done from his home QTH using the program VLC. To view them, you need to also use
VLC on your home PC and connect directly to Don's URL. (contact Don for the URL).
Recently, I signed us up to also do streaming from the British Amateur Television Club's
(BATC) dedicated streaming server in the U.K. This streaming service is viewable on
most devices, including PCs, tablets, mobile phones, etc. using most conventional
browsers, such as Goggles Chrome, Explorer, Firefox, etc. It does however, require that
you have installed Adobe Flash player on your device and also have it activated on the
browser. The link to our stream is: https://batc.org.uk/live/kh6htvtvr While our
repeater is outputting hi-definition, the stream is in 480P, 16:9 format. I am using the
"combo" receiver to monitor the output of our repeater. I am using the composite video
from the receiver going to an HP laptop computer via a composite to USB dongle
converter. On the HP, I am running the program vMix to receive the video, add a PIP
with ID, and stream it out to the BATC at 1Mbps. At this point in time, I am running the
stream on a 24/7 basis.
Don, N0YE, is soliciting feedback from users on their relative experiences of receiving
the two types of streaming, from his VLC URL and from BATC. Please send your
comments to Don at: [email protected]
TV Rptr @ NCAR: The TV

repeater has finally found a new,
permanent, home. Since January, it has
been transmitting from NCAR. Thanks
go out to Don, N0YE, for pushing this and
making it happen. Due to a lack of space
on the NCAR tower, we were only able to
install our Diamond X-6000
(2m/70cm/23cm) receive antenna at the
base of the tower. There was no space
available for our 70cm transmit antenna.
Fortunately, the Boulder Amateur Radio
Club (BARC) was willing to let us share
rack space in the radio room and also their
70cm antenna which they use for their
448.90 MHz FM voice repeater. Don was
able to build an antenna combiner network
which allows our TV transmitter on
423MHz to share the same antenna with
BARC's 70cm repeater.
From NCAR, the repeater has a

commanding view out over the eastern
prairie of Colorado. NCAR's elevation is
6,100 ft. plus the antenna's height is 120 ft
higher on the top of the NCAR south
tower. For FCC and CCARC reporting our
height above average terrain (HAAT) was a - 194 ft. This negative number was due to
the shielding effect of the Flatiron mountains directly behind NCAR to the west. To the
east, over the prairies, our effective HAAT is really about + 1000 ft.
We are running essentially QRP power. After our inter-digital channel filter, our RF
output power in DVB-T service is only about 5 watts (+37dBm). Our ERP is about 50
Watts. Even with this low power, we have fantastic coverage up and down the Front
Range of Colorado. The above 70cm transmitter coverage map was computed using the
free, on-line, program, Radio Mobile. It assumes the receiving base station is using a
simple, 6 element, 11dBi, yaggi antenna at a height of 30ft. If that station were to use a
10 watt, DVB-T transmitter on 70cm, the coverage into the repeater would be about the
same. The green shaded area is for strong signal strength > -80dBm. The yellow
shaded areas are for weak signals in the range -90dBm to -80dBm. The coverage area to
the north extends all the way to the Wyoming border. To the north-east out past Greeley.
On the east, the coverage extends out to the Denver International Airport (DIA). To the
south almost to Castle Rock. We still need to run coverage tests with 30ft. yaggis to
confirm these predictions. Mobile field tests run last year, confirmed the mobile
coverage maps, which predicted coverage out almost to Greeley.
HAM SHACK VISITS: I would like to start a regular part of this newsletter
to be a visit to each of our Boulder ATV ham's shacks. Thus, to start it off, I will show
you around my own ham shack. This will be an example of what I would like to do for
all of you.
JIM - KH6HTV Aloha from my

summer time, Boulder ham shack. In the
photo is the Hawaiian greeting "Shaka".
I am a retired EE "snow-bird". When the
snow flies here in Colorado - I fly to
Maui, Hawaii for the winter.
I have been experimenting with ham TV

since the mid 70s along with Joe, AD0I.
My main ham interest is ATV and more
recently DTV with DVB-T. I also enjoy
shooting videos of Janet's and my many
vacation trips. I air these videos on our
TV repeater. I also work HF. I prefer
the digital mode BPSK-31.
This is my operating desk for ham radio, etc. The HF station consists of a Yaesu FTdx-
3000 and a Heath SB-220 linear amp. I have a Dell all-in-one PC sitting next to the HF
rig and it is dedicated to run the HF digital modes of BPSK-31, RTTY, FT-8, and SSTV.
My main computer is an Apple MacBook Pro laptop with an extra monitor. Also on the
desk is an HP PC laptop dedicated to streaming the TV repeater to BATC. The TV
monitor in the center rear is monitoring 24/7 the TV repeater's output. Also on the desk is
an ICOM IC-2100, 2 meter, FM transceiver.
This is my electronics test bench. It contains a lot of analog TV test gear which I no
longer use with DTV. The key test instrument is the Rigol spectrum analyzer.
These are my various TV transmitters. I use the Hi-Des HV-100EH (upper right) as my
DVB-T modulator for 70cm, 33cm & 23cm. Sitting on top of it is a Hi-Des HV-110
receiver monitoring 24/7 Ch 60 (441MHz). This receiver along with the HV-100
modulator and the model 23-11A, 23cm, RF Power Amplifier (top center) comprise the
TV repeater's remote 70cm to 23cm remote receiver/translator. Below the 23-11A, is my
23cm FM-TV modulator. The tan box below it is my 10 W, 70cm VUSB-TV transmitter.
The bare aluminum box contains the up/down converter for 23cm DVB-T. The large
rack mount unit on the bottom is a salvaged ShowTime, 2.4GHz TV transmitter which I
am using as an RF power amp. for 13cm DVB-T.
This is my antenna tower. It is very hard to take a good

photo of antennas -- lots of sky and not much hardware. The
tower is Rohn 25 and is 50ft. tall. On top of it is my DX
Engineering hex beam for 20/17/15/12 & 10m bands along
with a Yaesu rotator. Dan Norman, N0HF, installed it for me.
I installed all of the other nine antennas on the tower myself.
I have antennas for all bands 3.5 MHz thru 5 GHz (except
220MHz & 3GHz) on the tower. For 2m, I have a 3 element
yaggi. For 70cm, I have a 4 element, colinear, DB-Products
DB-411 plus a 6 element, KLM yaggi. For 23cm, I have a 3
ft. Directive Eng. loop yaggi. For 2.4 & 5.8GHz, I have
BBQ grill dish antennas. For HF, in addition to the hex
beam, I have a pair of home-brew, fan dipoles (80/40/30m)
and (20/17/15/10m). There is also a 2.4GHz mesh node
vertical antenna for Don, N0YE's, mesh network.
ACTIVE ATV BOULDER HAMS: The following list is of those Boulder

area hams that are currently active in ATV, either transmitting or as viewers:
CALL Name Location CALL Name Location

KH6HTV Jim Andrews SE of Boulder Receive Only
N0YE Don Nelson S Boulder K0ANS Lew Warshawsky Longmont
WA2YUN Colin Bradley S Boulder KV5Y Ken Rawlings Englewood
K0HEH Jack Quinn C Boulder W3DIF Mike Derr Broomfield
WB2DVS Pete Goldman E Boulder K0RZ Bill McCaa Louisville
KC0PYX Larry Nelson N Boulder N0FZB Mike Laage E of Boulder
AB0MY Bill Eberle N Boulder
AD0U Joe Woods N Boulder Sheriff's SWAT Video Team
K0IHX Roger Salaman SE of Boulder K0ARK Allen Bishop
KD0PDZ Naomi Salaman SE of Boulder KB0LRS Mark Huff
N0RUX George Kretke NE of Boulder KI0HG Dave Sharpe
KB0NAS Doshia Kretke NE of Boulder K0DVB Matt Holiday
KE0OJO Zach Salaman Mead KA0QPT Scott Whitehead
AA6TV Don Apte Broomfield
WQ0TQG Steve Maddy Sugarloaf Mtn
K0DVB Matt Holiday Frederick

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TV Rptrs Rptr-1.doc (kh6htv, 7/7/2018) p.

BCARES will be staffing a couple of portable TV camera/transmitters outside the

TV Rptr @ NCAR: The TV

From NCAR, the repeater has a

JIM - KH6HTV Aloha from my

I have been experimenting with ham TV

This is my antenna tower. It is very hard to take a good

ACTIVE ATV BOULDER HAMS: The following list is of those Boulder

CALL Name Location CALL Name Location

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