Saturday 5 March 2016

ISS to Powys Secondary Schools, Mid Wales, UK

Echolink AMSAT audio


  • A direct contact with students at Powys Secondary Schools, Mid Wales, UK is scheduled for Sat 2016-03-0510:55:19 UTC 59 deg.The scheduled astronaut is Timothy Peake, KG5BVI.
         ​Please join us in listening to the contact:         - Audio from this contact will be fed into EchoLink *AMSAT* (101377) and IRLP Node 9010 Discovery Reflector
         - Streaming audio will be available at: https://sites.google.com/site/arissaudio/
         - Watch the contact live at:  https://principia.ariss.org/Live/ 
Audio on Echolink and web stream is generally transmitted around 20 minutes prior to the contact taking place so that you can hear some of the preparation that occurs. IRLP will begin just prior to the ground station call to the ISS. Please note that on Echolink there are automatic breaks of 1.5 seconds in the audio transmission. These occur every 2.5 minutes during the event. Breaks on IRLP are manual and occur approximately after every third question.

Powys Combined Schools represent all secondary schools across the county of Powys in Wales. With students from over 90 primary schools and 12 secondary schools, we represent students from the age of 4 up to 18. As Powys Combined Schools, we have a pool of some 7,700 students aged 11-18 and a similar number of 4-11 year olds in the primary schools.

​Our goal is be to leverage our existing relationships with the primaries in each secondary catchment area to organise a county wide event over the months leading up to the ARISS contact. During which time workshops, projects and activities aimed around STEM subjects would be run.

Powys covers the historic counties of Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire, most of Brecknockshire (Breconshire), and a small part of Denbighshire — an area of 5,179 km² or 2,000 sq miles, making it the largest county in Wales by land area. Most of Powys is mountainous, with north-south transport being difficult.

The majority of the Powys population lives in villages and small towns. The largest towns are Newtown, Ystradgynlais, Brecon, and Welshpool. Powys has the lowest population density of all the principal areas of Wales.

Just under a third of the residents have Welsh linguistic skills: Welsh speakers are concentrated mainly in the rural areas both in and around Machynlleth, Llanfyllin and Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant (where William Morgan first translated the whole Bible into Welsh in 1588) in Montgomeryshire (Welsh: Sir Drefaldwyn), and the industrial area of Ystradgynlais in the extreme south-west of Brecknockshire (Welsh: Sir Frycheiniog).