ATV

摘要

This summer marks the 40th anniversary of Telstar 1; this was the first satellite to provide a television link between the United States and Europe. The UK uplinks and down links were via the BT site at Goonhilly Down in Cornwall. There is a rumourthat on the first pass the French were reporting near perfect P5 pictures, while the best that UK systems could do was a watery P1. Raymond Baxter filled in with an ever-more difficult voice over. Then came the horrible realisation that there had been a mix-up with the receive antenna polarisation. The dish feed had been built LHCP when it should have been RHCP. The next pass had perfect pictures and it is doubtful that such an error could have been corrected on that time-span, but it makes a good story.