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www.southgatearc.org
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Learner from Kimberley will speak from spaceWhen South Africa's second satellite, named SumbandilaSat, is launched in June, it will be the voice of Anton Coetzee, a grade 10 learner at the Technical High School in Kimberley that will be heard from space with a very special message: "This is ZSOSUM in space. Anton read in the local paper about a competition for a voice message to be recorded and broadcast from SumbandilaSat and set out to write what turned out to be the winning message. The competition was the brainchild of SA AMSAT (Southern Africa Amateur Radio Satellite Association) and supported by the South African Amateur Radio Development Trust who spotted the opportunity to leverage the competition to focus attention of the youth on the exciting world of amateur radio.
"We are very excited about the message. It is powerful and conveys what SumbandilaSat is all about", SA AMSAT President Hans van de Groenendaal said. SumbandilaSat is a project of the Department of Science and Technology and was built by SunSpace in cooperation with the University of Stellenbosch. The satellite's main function is remote sensing. Experiments from several universities are included alongside the amateur radio equipment. The Amateur Radio system on SumbandilaSat comprises of a voice beacon, a transponder and a parrot repeater. The FM transponder will facilitate radio amateurs on the African continent to make contact with each other using inexpensive hand-held transceivers (transmitter and receiver) and easy to home-construct antennas. The transponder will operate on a 2 metre uplink and a 70 cm down link. The parrot repeater is a novel instrument that will record a short period of audio and then transmit it back to earth. It is similar to the one on South Africa's first satellite SunSat. SunSat was popular amongst radio amateurs worldwide and was often used in schools to demonstrate amateur radio and the science of satellite communication. "We are planning to do the same with SumbandilaSat," said Hans van de Groenendaal, ZS6AKV, President of SA AMSAT. The audio beacon announces the presence of SumbandilaSat as it orbits in space. Anton Coetzee's message will be the first, spoken in his own voice. The audio beacon is programmable by the ground control station and the message will be changed from time to time to support other youth activity involving the satellite. Amateur Radio offers everyone a great technical hobby, with opportunities for growing technical capability, and having fun at the same time. Amateur radio also provides valuable public service at times of emergency, providing communication facilities when all else fails. For learners Amateur Radio is a steppingstone into a career of electronics and communication. Anton Coetzee was presented with a state-of-the-art Compact laptop computer, complete with Vista operating software and Windows office student edition.
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