Is there anybody out there?

The Rotary Club of Grays Thurrock and the Amateur Radio Club from Coalhouse Fort joined forces to organise an afternoon of fun focusing on communications. The activities included speaking to each other via baked bean tins linked by string (yes it does work!) and more sophisticated radio sets. Other activities covered areas such as weather satellite reception, overhead satellite pictures, tracking aircraft movements and a quiz based around the use of hand held transceivers and the use of the phonetic alphabet. Some pupils even tried learning Morse and sending it via a local link. The students asked a considerable number of questions and they found the afternoon very interesting.

Edward Caines, Principal of Woodside Academy, said “This was a fantastic opportunity for our children to have a hands-on session with a range of technological equipment they might not normally see but is now in the background of our daily lives and helped us towards our goal of making learning at school truly exciting and relevant.