Guestbook

North London Television Group

14 December 1998

Chairman's Chatter

At the end of the year which for several personal reasons could have been considerably better, I'd like to take this opportunity to bring you up to date on the progress of the North London ATV Repeater project.

It was back in March when a group of North London ATV regulars agreed that a resurrection of the project to provide an ATV repeater serving North London, dormant for some 4 years, was overdue.

Meetings were held with Cheshunt and District ARC, which had initiated the original proposal: it was agreed to form a separate group (NLTG) utilising the considerable good work done by the club but driven by a small independent committee with the ability to concentrate on the demands of such a project. It should be said that the CADARC has already invested a considerable amount of money in repeater hardware so those who, like me, made donations to the project at the Picketts Lock show years ago should see them eventually put to good use.

During the summer effort went into completing the proposal together with experiments to ensure we could meet the specification. The proposal was sent to the RSGB for vetting at the end of September.

As many of you know, I had hoped to perform some site coverage tests from Enfield Civic Centre during November or December but unfortunately, due to personal commitments this has not been possible, for this I apologise, however, I hope to get some tests arranged for early in the new year. It is proposed to do initial tests around 1245MHz with an omnidirectional antenna which would enable 'simplex' users to use current set-ups. Following this, we would hope to carry out further tests using, say, 1312MHz with an antenna resembling that set out in our proposal. I would like to hear from members if they have any comments or other ideas.

I think that brings things up to date but we hope to see the 'licence' arrive before mid '99 - fingers crossed.

Finally, the committee, myself included, would like to wish all members of the NLTG a healthy and rewarding 1999.

Regards,

The Secretary's Stuff

Group Organisation:

Chairman/Site Manager	Roger G8IUC
Secretary/Treasurer	John G4DVG (me!)
Technical Representative	Adrian GOOGY
Clubs Liaison	Les G4GYP

At present, the Group has 26 members.

The Group's funds stand at £54.00, this being 26 subscriptions at £1.00 and various donations to £28.00. This money will be used to cover postage and any other minor expenses incurred in the early days. A bank account has been opened in the name of the NLTG.

Now to news of the application:

After the encouraging response by the RSGB Repeater Management Group to the Letter of Intent, as reported in the last newsletter, it was down to the hard graft of composing the application itself. It took some time to obtain an official letter of permission from the site owner, and the group is grateful to John, G3TZZ for his help in this matter. Roger G8IUC managed to persuade (read pressganged the requisite number of people to act as close-down operators and the Repeater Keepers of the neighbouring GB3HV, GB3KT, GB3AD and GB3TV installations kindly provided maps of their coverage so that we could show how well the London repeater would fit in. The resulting composite map is appended.

The application was finally submitted to the RMG on 25th September.

The RMG , who carry out the initial vetting of proposals before submitting them to the Radiocommunication Authority, queried only a couple of points, regarding the possibility of interference to the users of adjacent repeaters and to Heathrow radar, and the membership of the closedown list. The proposal was then forwarded to the RA in November. Graham Shirville of the RMG said that the RA seemed to be taking about 10-12 weeks to process applications so we could have a repeater licence by next March or April.

It has to be said that the RSGB RMG and Graham Shirville in particular have moved very quickly in the processing of the application and we thank them for their help.

I will let you know as soon as there are any developments. Information concerning the NLTG can be found on the Cheshunt radio club Web site at: http://uhars.herts.uk/cadarc/nltg.html and you can monitor progress of the application on the RSGB Web site, under Repeater Management.

In the meantime, may I echo the Chairman's best wishes to you and yours for the Festive Season.

This page was updated 21 December 1998