Growing up in Lady Frere in the Eastern Cape Sinamandla Maqina was that child who would take apart the radio. He wanted to know where the voices were coming from, but would always end up with pieces of unidentifiable equipment strewn on the floor.
“Unfortunately, I cost my parents a few of those,” he remembers with a wry grin.
Today Sinamandla graduates with a Master’s in Electrical Engineering and the confidence to build a radio from scratch.
The 28-year-old has already done more than reconstitute a radio, his Master’s thesis was “X-band Antenna Design for Nano-Satellite Applications”. This means, supervised by Prof Robert Lehmensiek, he designed an x-band antenna, modelled and simulated it on a computer and then built a working prototype. This antenna has since been built and installed on CPUT’s second nano-satellite which will be launched into space on Christmas Day.
While the nano-satellite uses the S-band for communication, the X-band antenna will be used when it has to send large amounts of data down to earth.
Sinamandla picked this particular thesis topic because of his interest in communication, but he didn’t start out in this exact field. When he registered at CPUT he had to enter the Mechanical Engineering department as his first choice was full. Once he graduated with his Diploma he switched to Electrical Engineering like his older sister.
He describes his first few months at CPUT as difficult, confusing even, because everything was studied through English only. “The problem was in class it would be difficult to understand, but as you go through the work you would see there are things you understand, but they are just moving really fast. Group study helped a lot.”
It also helped to realise that he wasn’t the only student who was struggling: “It’s not anything new, this idea of learning, it is just how it is being done and the speed at which it comes at you, that is different.”
Sinamanda figures next up he had better get a job in the real world of space aeronautics communication, but he doesn’t discount starting on a DEng in the near future. It’s just a case of fine-tuning what he wants, something he learned over the years at CPUT.
Written by Theresa Smith
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