NEWHAVEN FORT AMATEUR RADIO DAY
14TH March 2006
We went to Newhaven Fort to a presentation by a local Amateur Radio Group as part of National Science Week. The Radio Club showed us a DVD and gave us a talk about how and when radio waves were discovered and what they are used for.
One of them taught us how to do Morse Code. During the Second World War, he worked collecting all the coded information that was sent to Bletchley Park for decoding. He didn't know where it was going to during the War because it was all kept very secret and he had to sign the Official Secrets Act which meant that he couldn't talk about what he was doing.
All the coded letters he intercepted had to be posted to a PO Box 25. He only found out fifty years after the War when the Official Secrets status was lifted that all the information he collected had been sent to be decoded by the ENIGMA team. He told us that all the codes used to come in batches of five letters at a time.
When he visited Bletchley Park after the Official Secrets status had been lifted, he discovered that he had been intercepting information from the very highest ranking German Officers and that information had been very important to England to help us win the War.
Another person from the Club showed us all how to use the radio. We contacted quite a few different people. One of the people we contacted was somewhere lovely and sunny and warm, but at Newhaven it was cold and wet.
To use the radio you have to have a special license. There are three stages to the license. You have to start at the foundation stage. To pass that you have to learn basic Morse Code. When you have your license, you can even talk to the International Space Station when it passes overhead. A lot of famous people are Amateur Radio Club members.
After we had lunch we explored the tunnels underneath the Fort. We went all the way down 78 stairs and then all the way back up. Then we went and looked at the section about the First World War and the trenches.