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NBTV Convention 2004 April 24^th Loughborough

Those attending this year's NBTV conference at Loughborough couldn't have had expected the weather to be so fine. Both Dennis Asseman and Klaas Robers made an appearance as our European cousins as well as others far and wide throughout the United Kingdom.

Exhibits were of a high standard demonstrating the ingenious and resourcefulness of the clubs members.

Coming from the lobby we enter the exhibit room and we see already several exhibits on the tables. Members are showing and demonstrating the equipment they made last year and previous years. Let's take a short tour through the room to see what is shown this year.

If we turn around by 180 degrees and look down we see Dave Gentle in discussion with Denis Asseman. Here he explains the working of his mirror screw monitor, which he showed this year in working condition.

Here we see Daves mirror screw in operation. Light came from a line of high brightness LED's on a small experimenters PCB in front of the monitor. Synchronisation is not yet perfect, but light output now is fine.

Then we continue our tour anti-clockwise. Left of the table of Dave Gentle



we encounter the club shop managed by Les Robotham, who was doing brisk business as was the 'free to a good home' stand in the lobby.



Left of the club shop tables Denis Asseman shows this fine replica of the Daily Express monitor. Denis made a kit for it, which is shown in the lobby.



He also showed a replica of the Telehor disc monitor. Also for this one everything is brand new and finer made than the original machines.

Then continuing to the left we come to the table of our Dutch member Klaas Robers. He showed his disc monitor, seen from the back and opened. In the centre we see the vacuum tube 29 MHz transmitter as described in Newsletter 29/2 and at right a tube receiver in mirrored lay out under construction.

Then we come to the table of Vic Brown, who showed us his



Colour NBTV disc monitor, as described in Newsletter Vol.29, No.3.

This quite normal Nipkow disc type monitor has Red, Green and Blue LED's in the light box in stead of the orange or white single colour LED's that others use in their monitors. RGB signals are stored in a digital way on a CD-R. A special circuit retrieved the analogue video signals from the digital data of the CD. Here on the left you see the picture of his monitor, which was however not as bright and flicker free as we see on this enhanced digital photograph.

	Then in the corner we find Peter Smith' table. His video camera televised the persons looking into his replica of the Daily Express disc monitor. The video was converted into 30-line NBTV format and via a RF-path fed into the monitor. In this way you see yourself.
	Peters transmitter was a small transitorised circuit, but the receiver was a replica of the original Baird receiver, see at the left. In the interior of the fine replicated cabinet Peter made also a replica of the original receiver using original type radio lamps and in the original Baird circuit diagram.

Then going more to the left we find Sam Palmers table. Sam made a



disc Monitor and he used an old slide viewer as a magnifying glass. You can see the picture of the monitor, although the lens gives a lot of reflections.



On the same table we see Sams disc camera-monitor. The large circular blue enclosure of the disc makes this a well recognisable object.



Then we find a new disc monitor made by Eddie Greenhough.

Then we come to the exhibit of Graham Lewis. Graham made a tower of converter boxes. On the two monitors an NBTV picture is seen (centre) and a to CCIR-scan converted picture of the same source on the right. The short video scene came from Read Only Memory.

These are Grahams converters: NBTV 32 line to 624 line converter 6 bit 625 line to NBTV converter NBTV scope NBTV ROM test generator NBTV download ROM NBTV frame rate converter 12,5 to 50 Hz NBTV 6bit PC display and everything with its own power supply.

The last exhibition in this room was



a disc monitor made by Bryan Oliver running pictures of the club CD's.

Then coming back in the lobby we see



the Mirror Drum scanner of Jeremy Jago and the



fine replicas of the Baird Televisor and Baird receiver by Denis Asseman. However this nice finished receiver cabinet isn't housing a receiver at all, but NBTV signal generating digital circuits.

	Next to the Baird replicas Dennis showed us his replica kit for building a replica Daily Express monitor. The kit comes in a fine large cardboard box. When we open the box we find all parts packed carefully in labeled cardboard wrappings to prevent damage during transport.
	All parts are made with the greatest care and precision. As far as possible the documents on how to assemble the kit are made in the original style.

Noticeable this year was the almost absence of computer based display exhibits, most members tending to demonstrate mechanical equipment.



Although Chris Lewis demonstrated here in the Lobby the Virtual Televisor, a PC program supported by some extra hardware and designed by Ralph Taggart (USA).



Following the 'brunch' attended by over twenty members this year



the annual general meeting was held, chaired as always by Doug Pitt.
Malcolm Baird (John Logie Baird's son) although not present at the Convention, has accepted the post as president of the club and wrote us a personal letter. Jeremy Jago now takes on the position of vice-chairman. More details to be included in the next newsletter.



At the end of the meeting Denis Asseman handed over this Golden Trophy to Doug Pitt because of his bright idea of founding the club 30 years ago and all the work in keeping it alive all the time since.

To sum up a most enjoyable day, one to be repeated next year. We hope to see even more members at that occasion. Special thanks go to Chris Lewis, here photographed secretly during the enjoyable English breakfast type of lunch in the nice "canteen" of the university. He organisied all the contacts with Loughborough University and made it possible that we could have our Convention in this technical surroundings.

Reported by Klaas Robers. Pictures by Paul Godfrey and Klaas Robers.

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