On September 19th, 1997 the Metrovision ATV Club will celebrate its 25th Anniversary. When the club was first formed they petitioned the FCC for a Special Temporary Authority (S.T.A.) to put ATV on the ham band. Each S.T.A. was good for only six months. After the second S.T.A. the FCC was ready to pull the plug on ATV forever. Bruce Brown, WA9GVK and eighteen fledgling club members called Congress to put the pressure on the FCC. These were the dark and uncertain times for the future of Amateur TV. Ultimately it all worked out and the FCC made a rule change that allowed Amateur TV on the ham bands.

In 1975 a computer was added to the ATV repeater. Everyone had a keyboard at home for remote access. By using the keyboard you could access the health of the repeater, such as the power output and input signal strength. This was quite an accomplishment considering computer capabilities in the mid 1970's. In 1983 the FCC approved the retransmission of the space shuttle video. Bruce Brown and the club members went to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. and NASA supplied them with a raw video feed needed for ATV retransmission. This accomplishment made the local commercial TV prime time newscast. These were the very exciting times for Metrovision and the membership mushroomed. Each member was given a down-converter to watch the Space Shuttle rebroadcasts.

Metrovision participated in many major public service events in the mid 1970's to the late 1980's. There was the Marine Corps marathons and Hands Across America events. In these two events an ATV repeater was set up in the top of the Washington Monument with three to four satellite cameras. Bruce Brown and the club members also participate in disaster drills which proved their worth should a major catastrophe occur.

Bruce Brown, WA9GVK stated "If it wasn't for the article that appeared in QST in the very early 70's on how to convert a Taxi cab UHF transceiver (Motorola T44), to modulate a video signal, Metrovision would not be here today". This article was the inspiration Bruce needed to convince other hams to overcome the obstacles and put ATV in its place in the Amateur world.

73's, Rich
KA3BTD

http://www.bchfs.org/metrovision/atv.htm
metrovision@hotmail.com