Amateur Television - European Context

European Context

In Europe, which generally has a narrower UHF allocation than the USA, the majority of amateur television operation is currently frequency modulated on 1.2 GHz and above. The frequencies in use depend on national permissions. In most of mainland Europe, the most common frequency is 1255 MHz. Other bands commonly used for ATV are the 13cm (~2.3 - 2.45 GHz) and 3-cm(~10 GHz) bands, although ATV is used on most of the microwave bands.

In several countries cross-band repeaters are used, with AM inputs on 430 MHz and FM outputs on 1255 MHz, others have FM-ATV inputs on 13 cm and outputs on 3 cm.

In the United Kingdom, much activity occurs using in-band repeaters. These generally have an input of 1248, 1249 or 1255 MHz and typically output at 1308, 1312 or 1316 MHz, although other frequencies are also used. Simplex operation occurs on these or other frequencies chosen to avoid interference with other users of the band, e.g. 1285 MHz. Recent experiments have been done with digital modes following widely-adopted DVB-S and DVB-T standards. These new DATV transmissions need less spectrum bandwidth than FM-ATV and offer superior picture quality.