13 cm experiment

It turned out that you do not need to make a complicated circuitboard with stripline technology or other hi-fancy stuff to generate a 13 cm RF signal.

Yesterday I was able to transmit a video signal in the 13 cm band (on 2335 and 2365 MHz) to the video repeater PI6ZTM with a modest setup.

I made a small videotransmitter which provides about 10 mW (I guess) using a Z-Comm VCO  V804ME14.

Z-comm PLL VCO V804ME14

Th V804ME14 is followed by an MSA-0886 for some gain. Of course 10 mW is not sufficient to bridge a couple of kilometers. A PA was required. These days it is not really smart anymore to homebrew an RF amplifier at this high frequency yourself. A variety of WiFi boosters supplying 2..5 Watts are available. I bought a 2 Watt "Wifi 802.11b/g Wireless Broadband Amplifier Router 2.4Ghz Power Signal Booster" for $25 on ebay. 

                                          2 Watt WiFi broadband amplifier for 2.4 GHz

I received some comments from experienced ATV ham amateurs (PE1ODJ and PE1DWA); they informed me that the picture shown on the repeater channel was not too bad. After I directed my small biquad antenna better to PI6ZTM sometimes the picture was almost free of noise and glitches (but not always :-)  ).

                                      Simple videotransmitter setup for 13 cm 

(..if you cannot fix it with ducttape you are not using enough ducttape... :-) )

                             Dimensions biquad antenna for 13 cm