Equipment in the balloon
In order to accomplish this, weight, power and picture quality were all strong considerations. We decided to use the BC-20 camera, which only weighs one ounce but can produces a color picture with 330 lines of resolution and can be powered by a 9-volt battery for over five hours. In order to transmit the picture we decided to use the TXA5-RC transmitter board. This is a stripped down transmitter only weighing 3 ounces, but can provide more than one watt of output power.
Equipment on the ground
In order to interpret the signal on the ground the TVC-4G tunable down converter will be used in the chase vehicle. This hooks up directly to a TV through the coaxial connector and can then be played through channel 3 or 4. In addition to the down converter and TV, a VCR will used to record the entire broadcast.
The live-feed video equipment was purchased from PC Electronics. Specs on the equipment we purchased can be found in pdf file format off their website.