FCC regs and rules for model aircraft operations:

https://www.modelaircraft.org/sites/default/files/590.pdf

Part 97 rules:

§ 97.215 Telecommand of model craft. An amateur station transmitting signals to control a model craft may be operated as follows: (a) The station identification procedure is not required for transmissions directed only to the model craft, provided that a label indicating the station call sign and the station licensee's name and address is affixed to the station transmitter. (b) The control signals are not considered codes or ciphers intended to obscure the meaning of the communication. (c) The transmitter power must not exceed 1 W.

They call video tech for model aircraft First Person View

FPV Transmitter:

https://hobbywireless.com/12-13-ghz-transmitters-c-179_117_1...

And an example of experimental Digital ATV using 6MHz bandwidth (needs miniaturization to be practical):

https://stationproject.blog/2016/02/19/a-new-project-digital...

Also FWIW here are the two easy study guides used for US Tech/General licensing that can be downloaded. You shouldn't have any difficulty getting 35/35 on each in ten minutes.

No Nonsense Technician Class Study Guide

https://www.kb6nu.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/2018-no-non...

No Nonsense General Class Study Guide

https://archive.org/details/NoNonsenseGeneralClassStudyGuide

NB Tech now has 15 revised questions in test pool so check.

Command and control you can, but you wouldn’t have the bandwidth for video. Also, no ham radio for commercial purposes.

My experience has actually been the opposite. Most of the FPV pilots I've met are running their video TX at a power output that should require them to be an amature radio operator, whereas most of the guys controlling stuff on long range UHF actually know what they're doing and do so within spec.

Heh, yes, that's true about the FPV pilots. I'm pretty sure I've got an FPV camera kicking around here from China that actually transmits on the amateur bands, although it definitely wasn't marketed as a ham transmitter :). I also suspect that it'd be way out of spec, but I haven't actually hooked it up to the spectrum analyzer, nor do I use it. It's a curiosity that came in a kit a long time ago.

And I suspect the reason the people on long range UHF do so within spec is because, in my experience anyway, the ham guys get more and more grumpy as you go down in frequency. That video transmitter above operates in the 1.2GHz/23cm band, and no one (around here at least) seems to particularly care too much about it. Going downwards, the UHF (440MHz/70cm) band and the VHF (146MHz/2m) band are used pretty frequently for voice communication, so someone splatting all over the band would have people enraged. Going lower into the HF (<30MHz) bands, you've got people worldwide using those for communication, and they're more than happy to get the FCC or Industry Canada or whatever your local regulatory body is on your ass for breaking the rules.

You're correct. Sorry for being unclear. Also I genuinely don't know if you're even allowed to do video over HAM. I've heard stories about how local ham activists love to report folks for mucking up their precious bandwidth.

You definitely are! And my other two replies in this thread will probably shed a bit more light on both the video bit and the "local ham activists" bit :)

What about ATV? Seems like those guys have plenty of ham spectrum bandwidth...

ATV is a cool thing! And, thanks to you, I discovered there's more to it than I remembered from when I last read about it.

The more common form of Amateur TV is SSTV[0] - Slow-scan TV. This runs in 3kHz (!!!) of bandwidth and typically gets transmitted on voice frequencies, since it can fit inside the max occupied bandwidth there. People transmit this on the HF bands, which can go world-wide! But... for FPV-purposes, it's pretty much useless. You're looking at something like 8-114 seconds/frame.

But I had no idea that there's people doing Amateur fast-scan TV[1]. That's pretty cool too! I have no idea how readily available light and portable equipment would be for the 70cm or 33cm bands, but there is a bunch of equipment available for the 23cm (1.2GHz) band. As mentioned in my sibling comment... it's not necessarily legal equipment, and it's kind of just... available... from random distributors in China, but it works OK and you're not all that likely to have someone complain about it in that band, unless you happen to be interfering with their attempts to do the same thing :)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-scan_television

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_television

Funny you mentioned SSTV. I'm putting some SSTV software together and have an SSTV contest award hanging on my wall. It's a lot of fun. Fast-scan (what I always think of when I hear ATV) seems pretty extreme to me though. :) Wiki seems to indicate it's used for drone work...or could be...

Huh! I suppose you could do SSTV decoding with a sound card eh? Hmmm, a bit of research suggests there's a 2m SSTV station in town here, although it's not clear if it's still alive. I might have to spend some time fiddling with GNURadio tonight and see what I can whip up.

I kind of want to pull out that cheap Chinese analog FPV camera too and see how disgusting the spectrum on it is. I have pretty low expectations (camera + tx + rx for $20? yeesh...)

73