PC Electronics began as an Amateur Radio hobby designing circuits for transmitting and receiving ATV, UHF varactor multipliers and also teletype for use on Air Force MARS teletype traffic nets. As a result of writing articles on these circuits for 73 and West Coast Amateur magazines, many hams asked for printed circuit boards. The company name was chosen in 1965 as PC Electronics from making Printed Circuit boards part time in our garage and expanded over time to a variety of complete stuffed, soldered and tested boards. This was a decade before Personal Computers and we started getting blind calls from those looking for computer gear.

Our first 70cm ATV downconverter design.

Hams in the mid 1960's modified military surplus or tube type FM twoway commercial transmitters for ATV by video modulating the final tetrode tube grid bias - RCA CMU-15 - or triode cathode - Motorola T-44. We designed simple modulator boards for these applications: VM-1 for the tetrode tube grids, VM-2 for the higher power tetrodes, VM-3 for collector modulating the final transistor in the VHF Engineering TX432 board, and VM-4 for cathode modulating triode tubes. We even flew ATV in a LA County Sheriffs helicopter supporting the Pasadena Rose Parade in 1968. The modified RCA CMU-10 tube transmitter in the 70cm band was placed in the victims basket along with a DC to AC inverter and high voltage power supply. Antenna was a homebrew vertical colinear made with aluminum clothes line wire on a broom stick fastened to the basket. A real kluge, but it worked.

In the mid to late 70's we expanded to producing packaged ready to go ATV downconverters and in 1977 the company became a full time business with the production of the TC-1 Transceiver. They were manufactured until about 1985 wth various upgrades.

TC-1 10 Watt 70cm ATV transceiver - first shown in the A5 Magazine booth at the Dayton Hamvention in 1977.

Our product line expanded in the late 70's and into the 80's with accessories for making an ATV repeater - horizontal sync detector/repeater controller, video call ID overlay, color bar generator, clock and S-Meter video overlay, audio ID and mixer, and other boards. All these were used at and experimented with at our 434.0 to 1253.25 MHz ATV repeater on Johnstone Peak - the first coordinated ATV repeater in Southern California.

Many of our designs were done in support of public service events, which is a facet of the hobby that we enjoy most. The 1.5 Watt KPA5 "Kreepie Peepie" ATV transmitter board was developed as a portable unit for transmitting video back to officials for the 1984 Olympic marathon and bicycle events here. This board and derivatives have been used for many emergency and public service events as well as balloons, rockets and R/C vehicles - Rose Parade motorcycle mobile, Angeles Crest 100 mile trail race medical aid station, first video from the 17,000 ft Mt. Everest base camp, first fast scan video received by the Space Shuttle (STS-50), 2518 Mile 434 MHz ATV DX record, and many more interesting applications.

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