Portsdown 2018 "Contest Edition" Software

The Portsdown 20180515 Software Release is specially designed to enable easier participation in the IARU International ATV Contest. The added features are described below. NOTE: Not released yet!!

Bearing/Distance Calculator

From Menu 2, The "Locator Bearings" button enters the Bearing/Distance calculator. After selection of the button, the keyboard appears for the user to enter the callsign of the distant station. After entering the callsign, a second keyboard is displayed to enable the entry of the distant station's locator. Six, 8 or 10-character locators are acceptable; invalid locators are not accepted and cause the keyboard to be refreshed. After entering a valid locator, a list of the 10 most recent calculated bearings and ranges is displayed.

Touching the screen again causes it to return to Menu 2.

To immediately display the recently entered bearings and ranges without entering a new distant station, select the "Locator Bearings" button and then press enter on the keyboard without entering any text.

Entering a new distant station knocks the oldest entry off the bottom of the list.

Site and Beacon Bearing/Distance Calculator

The "Sites/Bcns Bearings" button on Menu 2 displays a list of pre-determined locations (which can be beacons, portable sites or simply frequent contacts). The list has been pre-populated for common sites and the South of England, but can easily be amended.

The pre-determined locations can be amended from the "Amend Sites/Bcns" button on Menu 3. This brings up 10 buttons, one for each pre-determined location. The location name and locator can be amended. There is no cancel button on this menu; to exit without changing anything, simply select one of the sites and press enter twice.

Entering Your Own Locator

To enter your own locator, select the "Set Call, Loc & PIDs" button on Menu 3, then select "Locator". You can then enter a 6, 8 or 10 character locator. The first 6 characters are saved for use on the Contest caption and on the TCAnim banner. The full 6, 8 or 10 characters are saved for calculating ranges and bearings.

New Functionality for Composite Video Output Mode

The Raspberry Pi provides an ideal video source for analogue video transmitters such as the 5.6 GHz FPV equipment. The Portsdown software "Comp Vid" output mode has been designed to take advantage of this capability.

First, select the "Output to" button on Menu 1 and then select "Comp Vid" as the output device. Selecting "TX" on the Main Menu will set the PTT on, and select the 71 MHz band output. This allows you to control your analogue video transmitter PTT from the 71 MHz PTT output. Menu 4 will display on the screen (and on the video output).

From Menu 4, you can select the PTT off, and back on again. You can also select a band to determine which Contest numbers are displayed. Selection of this band does not affect the digital transmission band, simply the captions on the Contest numbers page and the TCAnim banner.

Selection of any of the 5 video source buttons directly selects the appropriate video source.