Teacher Training for FUNcube dongle

Thanks to Pfizer Ltd the club has been able to purchase a special satellite receiver called a FUNcube dongle. The satellite is only a 10cm cube and its role is to send data to schools about its temperature and other telemetry so that the pupils have real scientific data to analyse. Teachers came from Thanet, Dartford and Maidstone to St Lawrence college to hear how Pfizer’s ‘Space Lab in a box’ can be borrowed by schools so that they can enhance their physics lessons.

The photo shows Don Clark from Pfizer showing the dongle to Jake Rendell, a teacher from the King Ethelbert school. Some club members also travelled to the University of Kent at Canterbury to their Tinker society where they explained the many fascinating aspects of amateur radio to the students. The students were impressed by the use of computing and software defined radio to interpret the radio signals. There was so much interest that many of them began their training for their amateur radio licence.