EMF 2012 badge of attendee Graham Shirville G3VZV

The technology camp EMF 2012 being held at Pineham Park, Milton Keynes runs from Friday August 31 to Sunday, September 2. BBC TV reports that two 20m high masts linked by microwaves have been erected for the event, one at the campsite and the other in the car park of a data centre 2.5 km away.

Among the weekend of presentations are some by radio amateurs such as Adam Greig M0RND (formerly M6AGG). Adam is a member of the UK High Altitude Society (UKHAS) and Cambridge University Space Flight (CUSF) and will be talking about High Altitude Ballooning. The balloons use 434 MHz for the telemetry and video image downlinks.

Amateur Radio Station at EMF 2012 – Image Credit Kitty Wong

EMF 2012 is a festival for anyone interested in radio, electronics, space, homebrewing, robots, UAVs, 3D printing, DIYBio, knitting, Internet culture or pretty much anything else you can think of. It is a volunteer effort by a non-profit group, inspired by European and US hacker camps like Chaos Communication Camp, HAR, and toorcamp.

BBC Technology reporter Zoe Kleinman produced this TV report on the Milton Keynes Electromagnetic Field Festival (EMF) 2012 as it was being set up on Friday. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19441861

Among the talks and workshops are
– High Altitude Ballooning by UKHAS / CUSF
– Basic Electronics
– Learn to Solder (Properly)
– Radio Design
– Vodafone repeater umbrella, and antenna design
– Space Shuttle

The amateur radio tent is the colourful gazebo on the helipad (next to the info tent).

EMFM radio will be operating during the event, see http://wiki.emfcamp.org/wiki/EMFM_Radio

20m Mast and antennas at EMF 2012 Milton Keynes – Image Credit Kitty Wong

A full list of talks and workshops at the EMF 2012 event being held at Pineham Park, Milton Keynes August 31 to September 2 can be seen at https://www.emfcamp.org/talks

It is understood the talks will be streamed to the web, links at
http://wiki.emfcamp.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_Field_2012

Pictures from EMF 2012 can be found on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/ just enter the tag EMFMK2012 into the search box.

EMF 2012 site https://www.emfcamp.org/

Videos of some of the satellite related presentations given at the popular Chaos Communication Camp can be seen at:

From OSCAR 1 to Mars and Beyond http://www.uk.amsat.org/3035

Not your Grandfathers moon landing http://www.uk.amsat.org/9258

MURSAT1 – A (Hacker) Space Art Project http://www.uk.amsat.org/5317

Building a Distributed Satellite Ground Station Network http://www.uk.amsat.org/3892

Hackspaces, places where people meet up to carry out construction projects, are springing up all over the country, see http://www.southgatearc.org/news/july2012/new_hackspace_in_chelmsford.htm