Early Color SSTV Experiments

It sounds impossible to get full RGB color out of a P7 phosphur CRT, but it was done 30 years ago by several color SSTV pioneers. It entailed capturing a colored image somehow, and then transmitting a given color several times to an SSTV monitor with a colored filter over the CRT while a Polaroid camera had its lens wide open in a completely dark room. Then the filter was changed and the next color was sent, and finally the 3rd color. After this the color polaroid picture was processed and prodly displayed.

Like Independent Sideband expirements, It was an interesting time, and sometimes it even worked. But the process was far too complicated. Later color SSTV by W9NTP involved a triple (R, G, B) scan converter for frame sequential color SSTV, which was also far too complicated for the masses, and 20 meters generally was too variable over the successive frame transmisions.

The first really practical SSTV color system was when W0LMD designed the first line sequential color SSTV system 15 years after the P7 color systems. A few years later commercial line sequential color SSTV became available, and B&W (or Black & Yellow) SSTV never returned.