We have set up a project for two of our students to explore Amateur Radio with the aim of building confidence, independent learning, experimenting and getting a HAM radio foundation licence. This licence will allow the students to operate their own station.
Under the guidance of Lenny (M0LNY) who has a Full Licence, we fired up the radio and had a go.
We made several different types of aerials out of things we had lying around and talked about how radio works, why aerials need to be a certain length for each frequency and experimented to see the effects. We listened to HAM radio operators in Italy, France and Russia, found lots of Morse and Data signals and some pretty random music radio stations in Russia and Italy.
So now we are set up, the plan is to design and built aerials capable of transmitting and receiving to satellites and fingers crossed, the International Space Station. So we are going to get into blue Peter mode, get some plastic pipe, bits of thick wire and follow some plans from other HAM radio operators and build it.
For more information about Satellite Radio communication, head over to AMSAT and have a read. It's easy once you figure out the jargon.
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