If you don't have access to a home computer, or the technical ability to construct your own testcard circuit, then all is still not lost. With the current growth of the home video making hobby there are plenty of useful accessories that we can make use of. Shown is one such self-contained character generator, which although fairly basic when compared with newer equipment is ideal for generating a simple Callsign to superimpose over your out going television pictures.

Also avilable and seen from time to time at some specialist rallies, such as the BATC one held around May time each year is the growing quantity of ex-broadcast equipment.

(The picture shown below illustrates one such peice of equipment from the FORA company)

Be warned though, as most of this Ex-broadcast equipment seems to be packaged in 19" rack mount units and so starts to consume considerable amounts of shack space. You must also remember that additional pieces of equipment may be required to get an item working. This may simply mean having a suitable sync pulse generator, that can supply the most common TTL drive signals.

If the equipment is not being sold as a complete working system, then think very carefully before spending considerable amounts of money. The BATC journal CQ-TV has a section where members can advertise items for sale, but also has a very useful "WANTED" section.

Circuits that you can construct yourself have featured strongly in CQ-TV over a large number of years.

One with excellent capabilities is the circuit designed by the BATC chairman Trevor Brown G8CJS entitled the "TELETEXT Caption Generator"

This uses the series of "Philips" SAA5000 teletext decoder & generation chips available for only a few pounds each from your usual tv spares supplier. I have put this one together using a small PCB available from the BATC together with a SONY CXA series chip to provide the PAL colour display into my 1.3GHz ATV transmitter.