About Me

My first encounter with SSTV came in 1985 when Jeremy Royle, G3NOX, asked me to help interface his new Robot 1200C scan converter to a BBC micro. The project was christened Digivision by Jeremy and was very successful - see the Projects section for more information.

The Digivision project gave me a taste for SSTV but the cost of scan converters like the Robot 1200C was prohibitive. A homebrew approach was my only option and I began working on a series of SSTV projects which are also described in the Projects section.

I have always been particularly interested in the technical aspects of SSTV, perhaps more so than actually using the mode on the air. However, in the 1990s I spent a lot of time operating SSTV on 2 metres FM. In 1994 I started keeping a count of stations worked and by the end of 1996 I had reached a total of 330 different stations worked on 2-way SSTV. This was all done with 25 watts of FM and a small beam. A list of the stations I worked can be found in the Articles section. This really was a golden age for SSTV, with new software coming out frequently and new SSTV stations appearing almost every day. Look at the huge number of JVFAX stations! We have a lot to thank DK8JV for.

In 1999 a move of QTH put amateur radio and SSTV on hold for a while. In 2011, an old friend (Ralph, G1LXI) contacted me out-of-the-blue to ask advice about purchasing a modern PC and interfacing it to his Robot 1200C scan converter. The RoboComm project was born and again, details can be found in the Projects section of this website. As part of the RoboComm development I acquired a Robot 1200C - something I could only have dreamed of when they first came out - and I invested in a "Martin" EPROM for it.

Playing with SSTV-related software again (after a gap of 12 years) rekindled my interest in the mode. I discovered MMSSTV and found it to be a comprehensive ready-made SSTV solution. However, I have always preferred writing my own software when possible, and I started dabbling with sound card based programs. At the time of writing this (April 2015) I have written several small SSTV programs but have not yet finished a complete send and receive package. See the Projects session for the latest news on my SSTV projects.

73, Paul G4IJE.

 

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