Dave Higgs, ZS2DH, of HAMNET Eastern Cape has told us about the Transbaviaans Mountain Bike event, which is taking place this weekend and at which PEARS and HAMNET EC are assisting. We look forward to a report on this race from you in the future, Dave.

The scientific part of our HAMNET report today says that the Planetary Society reports that its crowdfunded LightSail 2 spacecraft is successfully raising its orbit solely on the power of sunlight. Since unfurling the spacecraft’s solar sail on July 23, mission managers have been optimizing the way the spacecraft orients itself during solar sailing. After a few tweaks, LightSail 2 began raising its orbital apogee, something the mission team said demonstrated the mission’s primary goal of “flight by light for CubeSats.” Continuing to sail on sunlight in Earth orbit, the spacecraft’s orbital apogee hit 729 kilometres as of August 5, an increase of 3.2 kilometres since sail deployment.

LightSail 2 launched on June 25, and it deployed on July 2 from Prox-1, a Georgia Tech student-built spacecraft the size of a small washing machine. Using the Experimental License call sign WM9XPA, LightSail 2 automatically transmits a beacon packet on 437.025 MHz at 9,600 bps FSK every few seconds, which can be decoded into 238 lines of text telemetry describing the spacecraft’s health and status — everything from battery status to solar sail deployment motor state. Every 45 seconds, the spacecraft transmits “LS2” in CW on 437.025 MHz.

Thanks to the ARRL Letter for this interesting insert.

Science News reports that shudders in the cosmos have revealed what’s likely the sad end of a neutron star — getting swallowed by a black hole.

If confirmed, it would be the first solid detection of this source of gravitational waves, revealing a type of cataclysm never before spotted. Researchers from the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories reported the candidate event, which was detected on August 14, in a public database used by astronomers.

Scientists are still analysing the data to verify what created the gravitational waves, which are tiny vibrations in spacetime caused by massive, accelerating objects. But one thing seems fairly certain: “Something has occurred out there in the sky,” says physicist Daniel Holz of the University of Chicago, a member of LIGO. “So far, it doesn’t obviously look like anything we’ve detected with high confidence before.”

LIGO and Virgo previously have picked up gravitational waves from pairs of merging black holes and from colliding neutron stars, which are extremely dense collapsed stars. In April, scientists saw tentative hints of a rendezvous between a black hole and neutron star, but the signal was weak and could have been a false one.

This new discovery offers much more solid evidence: The detection was so clear that it’s considered very unlikely to be a false alarm. The researchers estimate that the run-in between the two objects occurred around 900 million light-years away, and within an area about 23 square degrees across the sky. (For comparison, the moon is about half a degree across.) Astronomers have since been peering at that region with their telescopes, looking for any light that may have been emitted in the merger. Such light could have been released if the neutron star were torn apart by the black hole before being gulped within its depths.

Further study of the encounter could help reveal new secrets about some of the universe’s most mysterious objects. But the potential detection is exciting on its own, Holz says. “The first of anything is always really fascinating.”

Now for the medical news in today’s bulletin, an excerpt in Science News, written by Aimee Cunningham reports that an especially dangerous type of tuberculosis may have met its match.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced on August 14 that it has approved the antibiotic Pretomanid to help tackle what’s called extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis. This form of the disease is resistant to at least four of the main TB drugs, and treatment often fails. Only around 34 percent of infected patients typically survive, the World Health Organization says.

The current treatment requires patients to take as many as eight antibiotics orally, and sometimes by injection, for 18 months or more. By contrast, the new antibiotic is paired with two other previously approved drugs, Bedaquiline and Linezolid, in a six-month course of pills. Ninety-five of 107 patients who had the highly resistant disease and took this drug regimen recovered, according to the TB Alliance, the non-profit organization that developed Pretomanid. The drug is only the third since the 1960s to be approved for tuberculosis, which is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis sickened an estimated 10 million people in 2017. Around 558,000 cases were multidrug-resistant, unresponsive to the two most powerful TB drugs. Of those cases, about 8.5 percent, or roughly 47,000, were extensively drug-resistant, according to WHO.

Pretomanid has been tested only in patients with highly resistant TB. More research is needed to determine whether the drug could be useful for the vast majority of patients who have TB that’s more receptive to treatment, says William Bishai, a tuberculosis researcher at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the drug’s development. Perhaps the standard regimen of multiple drugs taken for six months could be shortened by including the new antibiotic, he says. “We’re delighted to have this new drug Pretomanid, but there’s a lot more to do.”

And, in further medical news, Science News says that two Ebola treatments have proven to be effective in preventing death during a clinical trial conducted amid the ongoing Ebola outbreak in Congo, preliminary data suggest.

The trial began in November, with participants randomly given one of four experimental treatments. Data from 499 patients reviewed on August 9 suggest that those people taking one of two antibody treatments — mAb114 or REGN-EB3 — had a greater chance of survival than those on the antiviral drug Remdesivir or the antibody treatment ZMapp. Researchers reported the trial results in a news release on August 12th, but these findings have yet to be finalized.

“One thing that won’t change is that those two therapies are better than the other two — that’s for sure,” says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. The trial now enters a phase with only the two most effective treatments in order to gather more data on their safety and the immune response to each drug. Researchers won’t study enough patients, however, to determine which drug works best.

The percentage of patients who died while taking one of the two treatments was in the region of 29 to 34 percent. That’s a big improvement over the current 67 percent mortality rate reported for Congo’s outbreak, which began on August 1, 2018.

The successful conclusion of this ground-breaking research will make a huge difference to the risks of Haemorrhagic Fevers in Central Africa.

This is Dave Reece  ZS1DFR  reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

If you’re ever in a disaster and see a weird-looking aircraft flying overhead, don’t fret — it could be there to help you.

For two years, Chinese aircraft manufacturer OXAI Aircraft Co. has been developing MOZI 2, a fully solar-powered unmanned aircraft it hopes will one day help out in disaster relief situations.

On Saturday, the drone took its maiden flight at an airport in Deqing County — and it appears the test went off without a hitch.

OXAI Aircraft told Xinhua that MOZI 2 has a wingspan of 15 meters and is powered solely by solar cells. It can reach an altitude of 8,000 meters, with a maximum cruise time of 12 hours at night following eight hours of charging in sunlight.

In addition to contributing to disaster relief scenarios, the solar-powered drone could be useful for reconnaissance missions and communication efforts, OXAI Aircraft told Xinhua — and now that it knows the craft can fly, it can start working toward those applications.

Thanks to the website The Byte for this report.

We’ve all tried to kill a cockroach only to watch it scurry away at a super-fast pace.

One of nature’s creepiest insects, as it turns out, has inspired researchers to create a very tiny robot that could in theory burrow through natural disaster sites and relay information to rescue workers. The New York Post says that a team at the University of California, Berkeley have designed a robot that’s made out of a material known as polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and is the size of a postage stamp.

Scientists involved in the project explained that it could have many applications.

“For example, if an earthquake happens, it’s very hard for the big machines, or the big dogs, to find life underneath debris, so that’s why we need a small-sized robot that is agile and robust,” said Yichuan Wu, first author of the paper, who completed the work as a graduate student in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, in a press statement.

It’s also almost as hardy as a real cockroach, as the researchers repeatedly applied pressure to it by stepping on it.

“Most of the robots at this particular small scale are very fragile. If you step on them, you pretty much destroy the robot,” Liwei Lin, senior author of a paper on the research, told New Atlas. “We found that if we put weight on our robot, it still functions, more or less.”

Although the robot doesn’t look like much, it can actually do a lot, according to researchers: It can move along the ground at a speed of 20 body lengths per second, which is comparable to that of a cockroach and apparently the fastest pace among insect-sized robots. It can also zoom through tubes, scurry up small slopes and carry tiny cargo loads, like a peanut.

ARRL member Eric Knight, KB1EHE, played a role in the development of an RF-based Alzheimer’s disease treatment that now shows great promise. A study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease following a months-long FDA clinical trial of the treatment protocol concluded that memory decline in most patients “appeared to have been reversed to cognitive levels equivalent to 12 months earlier” after 2 months of treatment. The clinical trial concluded last December 31 and focused on the initial efficacy of what NeuroEM Therapeutics, Inc. — the company developing the device — calls “transcranial electromagnetic treatment” (TEMT), using a non-invasive head-worn device called the MemorEM™.

“Results from the trial demonstrate that TEMT was safe in all eight participating patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease, and enhanced cognitive performance in seven of them, as measured by standard cognition scales,” said a news release from NeuroEM Therapeutics. Seven of the eight clinical trial patients agreed to take part in a 4-month extension study, based on the findings and the positive feedback from all participants.

“This pioneering study suggests that TEMT may be an entirely new therapeutic intervention against Alzheimer’s disease,” said NeuroEM CEO Dr. Gary Arendash. “Our bioengineering technology may be succeeding where drug therapy against this devastating disease has thus far failed. TEMT appears to be affecting the Alzheimer’s disease process through several actions directly inside neurons (brain cells), which is where we believe the disease process needs to be stopped and hopefully reversed.” Arendash has explained that TEMT in the 900 MHz range breaks down the small protein aggregates (amyloid oligomers) in brain cells that are thought to initiate Alzheimer’s development.

Knight, of Unionville, Connecticut, is the president of Remarkable Technologies. He has no medical background, but several years ago, he learned of experiments that Arendash had carried out on mice specially bred to have Alzheimer’s disease, in which the mice were exposed to low levels of RF for therapeutic purposes. The effects were dramatic, sometimes even reversing the disease’s effects. Borrowing some concepts from earlier experiments with small rockets and avionics, Knight set about developing — and later patenting — a wearable device that could deliver requisite low levels of RF to a human head. NeuroEM was also developing a device, which it patented as well, and NeuroEM has filed multiple patents since then, Knight explained to ARRL. NeuroEM has an exclusive license to Knight’s patent, and his contribution is now part of the overall mix of applied technology.

“As an inventor and entrepreneur, all you can hope for is to have a positive impact on society, and this is about as important as it gets,” Knight told ARRL News, whom we thank for this insert.

Finally, please be aware of Tropical Cyclone LEKIMA-19, which is currently 650km North-East of Taiwan, and bearing down on the Chinese mainland, with windspeeds of up to 190kph. 40000 homes in Taiwan are without power (as of Friday), and citizens in coastal areas are preparing to evacuate their homes. A RED typhoon warning has been issued for the coast of Taiwan and far Eastern tip of Chinese Mainland, while heavy rain, strong winds and storm surges are expected along the coast and Ryukyu Archipelago.

Please be mindful of emergency communications on HF frequencies over this weekend.

This is Dave Reece  ZS1DFR  reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

ARRL News reports that the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) next-generation Interoperable Radio System (IORS) successfully completed a battery of stress tests, required as part of the final certification of the hardware for launch to and operation on the International Space Station (ISS). The IORS consists of a JVC Kenwood D710GA transceiver and the AMSAT-developed Multi-Voltage Power Supply (MVPS). In early July, the equipment successfully completed a series of electromagnetic interference/electro-magnetic compatibility (EMC) tests to ensure that the ARISS hardware will not interfere with ISS systems or other payloads.

The IORS also successfully passed power quality and acoustics testing, which verified that the ARISS IORS will not introduce harmful signals back into the ISS power system and is quiet enough to meet ISS acoustic requirements. ARISS Hardware Team members Lou McFadin, W5DID, and Kerry Banke, N6IZW, were at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre to support the 2-week battery of tests in concert with the NASA test and certification team.

“Since the IORS is being qualified to operate on 120 V dc, 28 V dc, and Russian 28 V dc as well as transmit on VHF or UHF, a lot of test combinations were required to cover all cases,” Banke said. “Each input voltage type was also tested at low, medium, and high line voltage. Moreover, additional permutations were required to test the IORS under no load, medium load, and full load at each voltage level. So it should not be surprising that the tests took 2 weeks to complete.”

Successful completion of these tests represents a key milestone in preparing the IORS for launch. ARISS says it now can begin final assembly of the flight units and prepare for their safety certification before launch. ARISS is working toward launch-ready status by year’s end.

From a Blog entitled Bryan on Scouting, for Adult Scouting Leaders, comes proof that you can reach practically any corner of the globe via amateur radio. That’s the message K2BSA wanted to show Scouts at the World Scout Jamboree. Those in the amateur radio association launched four Mylar balloons from the Summit Bechtel Reserve in West Virginia, in hopes that one would catch the jet stream and end up on the other side of the world.

Each balloon, about 3 feet in diameter, was equipped with a global positioning system and an amateur radio transmitter. This combination of devices could relay information about weather conditions, the balloons’ movement and location. Solar panels power the transmitter, sending signals during daylight hours. Filled with high-grade helium, each balloon could reach a height between 28,000 and 32,000 feet — that’s nearly as high as most commercial planes fly.

The first balloon, launched on July 21, was only in the air for a few hours before it was last tracked northeast of The Summit, still in West Virginia.

The second balloon, however, which went up on July 24, sent its last message two days later — from Spain. Specifically, the balloon reported back from the north-central part of the country, near the village of Bordecorex.

The third balloon was launched on July 27. The next day, signals were sent back from New Jersey; and the next day, it appeared to be floating by Newfoundland.

“We’ll continue to monitor this payload as it progresses,” says Bill Stearns, K2BSA vice president.

The final balloon went up on July 29 and tracked in the opposite direction, last heard over eastern Kentucky.

The amateur radio association also arranged communication with the International Space Station on July 27. Scouts were able to ask astronaut and assistant Scoutmaster Andrew Morgan some questions about space and his 8-month mission in space.

For more than 60 years now, amateur radio has been a fun part of the World Scout Jamboree. The Jamboree-on-the-Air was launched during the 1957 World Scout Jamboree in the United Kingdom.

Southgate Amateur Radio News reports that, with two weeks to go, and 335 registrations received for the International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend so far, organisers are hoping for another 100 over the next 14 days.

Leading the field is Germany with 53 entries, USA with 48, Australia 39 and England 24. Just as important are the 17 countries with only one entry each some of which are sought after by DXers and award hunters. Some are the Canary Islands, Gibraltar, Panama Canal, Namibia, Latvia, Trinidad and Tobago, Serbia and Market Reef.

One entry worthy of note was received on Friday from GB2LG, the Wigtownshire ARC, for the Mull of Galloway Lighthouse. This club was a participant in the Northern Lighthouse Activity award 26 years ago, and which became the International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend in 1998.

GB2LG has been at the same lighthouse with the same call sign since 1993. There are several other entrants who have been in the ILLW continuously since 1998 and these have been acknowledged with an appropriate certificate.

Our reliable and trusty reporter, Keith Lowes, ZS5WFD, Director for HAMNET KZN reports that the Division will again be providing 12 operators to manage communications for the Kloof Conservancy 3 Falls Trail Run today the 4^th August 2019, organised by the Kloof Conservancy. Operators assisting are: Keith Lowes ZS5WFD (Race Control/JOC), Dave ZS5DF, Terry ZS5TX, Troy ZS5TWJ,  Peter ZS5HF, Hettie ZS5BH, Geoff ZS5AGM, VAL ZS5VAL, Jitesh ZS5JM, Jason ZU5Z, Brad ZS5Z and Craig ZS5CD.  Last year saw us dealing with a number of medical emergencies that fortunately were not too serious. The race, now in its 8^th year will start at 06H30. It covers a distance of 18,6Km through the Krantzkloof Nature Reserve, starting and ending at the Forest View Primary School.  Approximately 350 runners have registered and at least 50 people have entered for the 6,5Km Fun Walk which starts at 06H45.

Keith says that communications will be on the 145.625 Highway Amateur Radio Club repeater with additional links to the JOC on the Ezemvelo Wildlife repeater system that the field rangers will be utilising.

Thanks for the news, Keith – we look forward to your race report in a future bulletin.

This is Dave Reece  ZS1DFR  reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has declared the Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

“It is time for the world to take notice and redouble our efforts. We need to work together in solidarity with DRC to end this outbreak and build a better health system,” said Dr Tedros. “Extraordinary work has been done for almost a year under the most difficult circumstances. We all owe it to these responders – coming from not just WHO but also government, partners and communities – to shoulder more of the burden.”

The declaration follows last week’s meeting of the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee for Ebola in DRC. The Committee said recent developments in the outbreak underpin the decision, including the first confirmed case in Goma, a city of almost two million people on the border with Rwanda and the gateway to the rest of DRC and the world.

The Committee expressed disappointment about delays in funding which have constrained the response and made a number of specific recommendations related to this outbreak.

The United Nations has also activated a humanitarian system-wide scale-up to support the response efforts.

In better news, AIDS-related deaths continue to decline as access to treatment expands and progress continues in the delivery of HIV/tuberculosis services, according to a new report from the United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS).

Since 2010, AIDS-related deaths have fallen by 33 per cent to 770,000 in 2018, the Global AIDS Update shows.

Global declines in AIDS-related deaths have largely been driven by progress in eastern and southern Africa. In Eastern Europe and central Asia, however, AIDS-related deaths have risen by 5 percent and in the Middle East and North Africa by 9 percent since 2010.

That’s great news that Southern Africa is leading the field in AIDS death prevention.

In a week of mixed blessings, the Western Cape experienced a huge winter storm, with the majority of the rain falling on Tuesday.  The City’s Disaster Operations Centre logged 176 incidents including flooding, power outages and fallen trees or structural damage, following the most recent heavy weather episode.

The Disaster Operations Centre logged 43 flooding-related incidents; 122 power outages across the metropole; nine incidents of trees that had blown over or fallen branches, and two incidents where roofs were blown off in Masiphumelele and Burundi informal settlement.

Operationally, the status of reported incidents included 3 640 structures affected in 7 suburbs, fallen trees reported in 6 municipalities, roads flooded across the city, and power outages in 15 municipalities.

Looking on the good side, catchment areas of all the major dams supplying the Cape Peninsula experienced heavy and prolonged rain, and all dams have shown upwards of 5 percentage points of improvement, with the Berg River Dam finally overflowing its wall, and quoted as 102% full. This is wonderful for the rapidly enlarging population of the Peninsula, and, with another 6 weeks or so of winter rainfall possible, our dams can potentially provide us with a summer free of water-worry.

Southgate Amateur Radio News has received news from Rob Mannion, G3XFD that a new movie called “The Current War” has gone on general release in the UK. The film features the “war” between the rival promoters of D.C. and A.C. …namely Edison and Westinghouse.

The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon, Katherine Waterston, Tom Holland, Tuppence Middleton, Matthew Macfadyen and Nicholas Hoult.

Rob notes that it’s not often we see films that feature the stories of technology. So watch for the release of this one in South Africa soon.

The Website Phys.org reports that, more than 100 years after Albert Einstein published his iconic theory of general relativity, it is beginning to fray at the edges, according to Andrea Ghez, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy. Now, in the most comprehensive test of general relativity near the monstrous black hole at the centre of our galaxy, Ghez and her research team report on July the 25th in the journal Science that Einstein’s theory of general relativity holds up.

“Einstein’s right, at least for now,” said Ghez, a co-lead author of the research. “We can absolutely rule out Newton’s law of gravity. Our observations are consistent with Einstein’s theory of general relativity. However, his theory is definitely showing vulnerability. It cannot fully explain gravity inside a black hole, and at some point we will need to move beyond Einstein’s theory to a more comprehensive theory of gravity that explains what a black hole is.”

Einstein’s 1915 theory of general relativity holds that what we perceive as the force of gravity arises from the curvature of space and time. The scientist proposed that objects such as the Sun and the Earth change this geometry. Einstein’s theory is the best description of how gravity works, said Ghez, whose UCLA-led team of astronomers has made direct measurements of the phenomenon near a supermassive black hole—research Ghez describes as “extreme astrophysics.”

The laws of physics, including gravity, should be valid everywhere in the universe, said Ghez, who added that her research team is one of only two groups in the world to watch a star known as S0-2 make a complete orbit in three dimensions around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. The full orbit takes 16 years, and the black hole’s mass is about four million times that of the sun.

The researchers say their work is the most detailed study ever conducted into the supermassive black hole and Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

The researchers studied photons—particles of light—as they travelled from S0-2 to Earth. S0-2 moves around the black hole at blistering speeds of more than 16 million miles per hour at its closest approach. Einstein had reported that in this region close to the black hole, photons have to do extra work. Their wavelength as they leave the star depends not only on how fast the star is moving, but also on how much energy the photons expend to escape the black hole’s powerful gravitational field. Near a black hole, gravity is much stronger than on Earth.

So monitoring those photons over a very long time can help prove Einstein’s original theory. That theory has certainly stood the test of time.

This is Dave Reece  ZS1DFR  reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

HAMNET REPORT 21 JULY 2019

This weekend, we have been remembering the Apollo moon landing 50 years ago on the 20^th of July 1969. Some of you remember listening to the live radio transmissions of the landing – remember we didn’t have television in 1969 – and some of you will be curious to see what the video footage actually looked like.

Well, here is your chance. Ben Feist has created a blogspot with all, and I really do mean all, the video and audio collected from all the sources around mission control, the launch pad, the landing site on the moon, and the video footage of the astronauts placing instruments on the moon. Be prepared for a long watch, but you can see it all at  https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/

Thank you to Southgate Amateur Radio News for sharing that with us.

The ARRL Letter for July the 18^th reports that The Nashville Tennessean newspaper recently featured the story of a 104-year-old ARRL member who contributed to NASA’s effort to put the first humans on the moon 50 years ago this month. Cary Nettles, W5SRR, of Columbia, Tennessee — who calls himself the nation’s oldest rocket scientist still alive — was a NASA project manager and research engineer on rocket propulsion systems in the 1950s and 1960s.

While working on the Centaur second-stage rocket program, Nettles determined that the rocket engine failures NASA was experiencing were a result of misdirected exhaust destroying the vehicles’ engines. Nettles told the Tennessean he came up with an “exhaust pipe” that solved the problem. In May 1966, an Atlas-Centaur launcher propelled the first Surveyor lander toward the moon. That year, NASA awarded Nettles and colleague Ed Jonash with its Distinguished Service Medal for “their superhuman effort in turning the troubled rocket into a reliable upper stage,” according to a 2004 NASA publication, “Taming Liquid Hydrogen — The Centaur Upper Stage Rocket 1958 – 2002.”

On July 16, 1969, a Saturn V rocket with a liquid hydrogen-fueled second stage carried astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to their rendezvous with the moon. Nettles retired from NASA the following year.

Nettles got his Amateur Radio licence in 1945, and remains active on 40 meters as well as on VHF and UHF repeaters

Thanks to the ARRL for sharing that story.

Jennifer Crompton, writing in WMUR9 reports that a World War II veteran from Portsmouth who played a critical role in radio communications was honoured on Friday for his service.

Antonio Vaccaro, 100, was newly married when he volunteered in World War II. He was a radio engineer at WHEB in Portsmouth before becoming an Army tech sergeant.

“I guess a favourite memory for me was V-J Day, when the Japanese broke into our frequency and said they wanted to surrender,” Vaccaro said.

Vaccaro still lives independently, as a widower with a large, close-knit family. Five generations of his family gathered on Friday at Portsmouth City Hall to recognize his service.

“As a communications chief for the renowned Flying Tigers, Tony was instrumental in the fight against the Japanese,” U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said. “He jerry-built and maintained radio equipment used by the squadron, and he developed a relationship with Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek.”

The Flying Tigers was an American volunteer group of the Chinese Air Force that was organized before the U.S. entered the war.

“He’s credited with climbing into the hills accompanied by five Chinese soldiers to rig up the radio beacons that brought the Enola Gay home after dropping its atomic cargo in Japan,” Brig. Gen. William Conway said.

“I put the direction finders on top of some mountains,” Vaccaro said. “When they dropped the atomic bomb, they couldn’t come back from where they came. They had to fly over, pick up my homing devices and come to our field.”

Vaccaro was honoured Friday with six medals, recognition his family said he never asked for. A fine endeavour indeed!

The 19^th July marks 9 years since the death of the man who invented the aircraft “Black Box”. BBC.com tells us that Dr David Warren received a gift as a young boy of a crystal set, from his father, and this launched a love affair with science.

When his father was killed in an air crash, David became obsessed with an idea, which his Aeronautical Research Laboratory bosses at the Australian Defence Department frowned on, of a recorder which would help trouble shoot the cause of aircraft crashes.

One day in 1958, when the little flight recorder had been finished and finessed, the lab received an unusual visitor. Dr Coombes, the chief superintendent, was showing round a friend from England.

Dr Warren explained how  his world-first prototype used steel wire to store four hours of pilot voices plus instrument readings and automatically erased older records so it was reusable.

The visitor was Robert Hardingham (later Sir Robert), the secretary of the British Air Registration Board and a former Air Vice-Marshal in the RAF, and he was impressed.

David was soon on a plane bound for England – with strict instructions not to tell Australia’s Department of Defence what he was really doing there, because “somebody would frown on it”.

In England, Dr Warren presented “the ARL Flight Memory Unit” to the Royal Aeronautical Establishment and some commercial instrument-makers.

The Brits loved it. The BBC ran TV and radio programmes examining it, and the British civil aviation authority started work to make the device mandatory in civil aircraft. A Middlesex firm, S Davall and Sons, approached ARL about the production rights, and kicked off manufacturing.

Though the device started to be called “the black box”, the first ones off the line were orange so they’d be easier to find after a crash – and they remain so today.

Peter Warren believes the name dates from a 1958 interview his father gave the BBC.

“Right at the end there was a journalist who referred to this as a ‘black box’. It’s a generic word from electronics engineering, and the name stuck.”

In 1960, Australia became the first country to make cockpit voice recorders mandatory, after an unexplained plane crash in Queensland killed 29 people. The ruling came from a judicial inquiry, and took a further three years to become law.

Today, black boxes are fire-proof, ocean-proof and encased in steel. And they are compulsory on every commercial flight.

David Warren worked at ARL until his retirement in 1983, becoming its principal research scientist. He died on 19 July, 2010, at the age of 85. I think we are all better off because of him.

This is Dave Reece  ZS1DFR  reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

Dan Falk, writing on the Smithsonian.com website summarises some interesting backroom radio events in his report on the Apollo moon landing 50 years ago this week.

The Apollo lunar module had a transmitter for sending back not only TV images but also crucial telemetry, radio communications and the astronaut’s biomedical data—but receiving those signals was no simple matter. The transmitter had a power output of just 20 watts, about the same as a refrigerator light bulb, and picking up that signal from the moon a quarter of a million miles away required huge, dish-shaped antennas. Moreover, as the Earth turns, the moon is only above the horizon for half the day at any one receiving station. So NASA relied on ground stations on three different continents, located at Goldstone, in California’s Mojave Desert, in central Spain, and in south eastern Australia. To this day, these radio stations make up the Deep Space Network, allowing NASA to monitor all parts of the sky for communications at all times.

The critical moment when Armstrong and Aldrin were due to leave the lunar module and step out onto the moon’s surface was initially scheduled for noon, eastern Australia time, which would have put the giant 64-metre dish at Parkes, New South Wales, in prime position to receive the signal.

But all did not go according to plan. The astronauts, eager to leave the spacecraft, decided to skip their scheduled rest break and began preparing for their moonwalk some six hours ahead of schedule, forcing the Australian antennas to aim just above the horizon, rather than overhead. Because of its design, however, Parkes can’t tilt its huge dish any lower than 30 degrees above the horizon. And to complicate matters, it was just then that the windstorm of a lifetime kicked in, with gusts of 60 miles an hour buffeting the giant Parkes dish.

With the winds howling at dangerous speeds, normal protocols would have called for a halt to telescope operations—but this was humankind’s first visit to another world, and the rules were bent. Parkes director John Bolton gave the go-ahead to keep the dish operating.

Fortunately for the Parkes crew, the astronauts took longer than expected to put on their spacesuits and depressurize the lunar module in preparation for the moonwalk, allowing the moon to rise a bit higher in the sky and align with the big dish’s line of sight. And even more fortunately, the delay allowed the storm to blow over. The wind eventually subsided, allowing the telescope to lock onto the Apollo signal.

Controllers in Houston could choose which feed to send out to the TV networks, and in the end telescopes in both California and Australia played a role. Viewers around the world saw the superior images from the enormous Parkes dish—and remained on Parkes for the majority of the two-and-a-half-hour lunar walkabout.

Most viewers would have known nothing of the windstorm at Parkes—or even of the giant dish that played such a vital role in the historic broadcast.

Parkes remains a world-class radio observatory, known for the first detection of Fast Radio Bursts (mysterious bursts of energy from deep space) and for participating in the search for extra-terrestrial civilizations as part of the Breakthrough Listen project. The giant dish also continues to track NASA spacecraft, including Voyager 2, now some 18 billion kilometres from Earth.

Most of the scientists, who work at Parkes today, though too young to remember Apollo, are still keenly aware of the history that surrounds them.

Thank you to Smithsonian.com for the extracts from Dan Falk’s report.

ARRL News says that the Hurricane Watch Net (HWN) and WX4NHC— the Amateur Radio station at the National Hurricane Centre (NHC) in Miami — have announced plans to activate, as Tropical Storm Barry approaches the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi. The HWN activated yesterday (July 13) at 01h00 UTC on both 14.325 MHz and 7.268 MHz.

Graves said that once the net activates on Saturday, it will remain in operation until further notice. He said that the HWN also will be available to provide back-up communication to official agencies in the affected area and will be collecting and reporting “significant damage assessment data” to FEMA officials at the National Hurricane Centre.

“We encourage all ham operators in the affected area to take all safety precautions needed and comply with evacuation orders from authorities,” WX4NHC Assistant Manager Julio Ripoli, WD4R, said. The Hurricane Watch Net and WX4NHC typically coordinate their activities, with the HWN reporting weather data observed by participants to the NHC via WX4NHC.

Hurricane hunters report that Tropical Storm Barry is gaining strength. Forecasters predict additional strengthening before landfall; Barry is expected to be a hurricane when the centre reaches the Louisiana coast. The NHC says dangerous storm surge, heavy rainfall, and high wind conditions are expected across the north-central Gulf Coast.

The heavy rainfall could generate additional flooding in the region. According to NHC forecasters, Barry is expected to produce total rain accumulations of 10 to 20 inches over south-central and southeast Louisiana as well as over southwest Mississippi, with isolated maximum amounts of 25 inches. “These rains are expected to lead to dangerous, life-threatening flooding over portions of the central Gulf Coast into the Lower Mississippi Valley,” the NHC forecast said.

Please be mindful of emergency nets on 14.325MHz or 7.268MHz, or thereabouts, in the next few days, and maintain radio silence if you hear traffic there.

In a combined report regarding rescues on Table Mountain, written last week, Wilderness Search and Rescue commends three aspects of rescue worth, which showed themselves in a 12 hour period.

Firstly, some of the parties that needed rescuing were able to drop WhatsApp pins on their phone Apps to pinpoint their positions. This is a marvellous development in modern smartphone technology, and made the job, for searchers finding them, considerably easier.

Secondly, the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company is always ready to assist in bringing injured or rescued people off the mountain, if the weather allows it.

And thirdly, responders, all of them volunteers, are ready and willing to go back and rescue another person or party, even though they have just come off a challenging and arduous rescue. They are all to be highly commended for this.

In the weekend under consideration, four rescues took place within 12 hours, interestingly involving 11 hikers, 3 from Australia, 2 from the USA, 1 from France and 2 from the Netherlands, with 3 local hikers in the Australian party.

We can only be grateful to the climbers, 4-wheel drive enthusiasts and HAMNET members, who brought all these people safely down.

This is Dave Reece  ZS1DFR  reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

The Belfast Telegraph Digital reports that an amateur radio enthusiast from County Londonderry has helped rescue a man more than 300 miles away in Wales.

Dungiven couple Esther Harper, and her husband Ivan Evans, were in Co Fermanagh near the border town of Belcoo yesterday lunchtime, when Esther received a mayday call.

Fellow radio ham Richard Haynes had stumbled across what he believed to be an injured motorist in the county of Ceredigion. The driver was on the Greenlaning Road on the Strata Florida trail, an off-road driving route.

Richard radioed Esther, who was surprised to receive the mayday call.

“I had a great signal, which is very unusual for that part of the Mournes,” she told the Belfast Telegraph.

“I had never heard a mayday call before.”

Esther immediately sprang into action and rang 999. The emergency operator asked her to ring Richard back and get further details, because the rescue services weren’t sure if the call was genuine at the time.

When Esther radioed back she was able to get a grid reference and asked Richard to name a town close to where they were. From these details, the rescue services in Northern Ireland were able to contact the ambulance service in Wales. The emergency services were able to scramble a helicopter with a medical crew aboard, which was successful in rescuing the injured party.

After the brief encounter on the radio Esther heard nothing until later that evening.

But at around 8pm Richard got in contact with her to confirm the emergency services had arrived. Esther was unable to confirm the condition of the injured person, but was told that he had been air lifted within an hour of her ringing 999.

“I was amazed at the link-up between the different services. We were taken aback,” Esther said. Both she and her husband are members of the Northern Ireland North West Raynet group, which is part of a British national voluntary communications service provided by amateur radio operators.

Here’s a good example of the sort of report issued by a Field Day group in America after the exercise 2 weeks ago.

The Edgefield County Amateur Radio Club (call sign WR4EC) with the assistance of the Edgefield County Emergency Management Agency had a successful weekend on June 22nd & 23^rd, participating in the Nation-wide Amateur Radio Field Day event. Nine operators set up, operated and broke down various radios and antennas throughout the weekend.  Switching between different modes of transmitting (voice, digital, and Morse Code), eight of the operators were able to provide 24 hours of continuous radio coverage.  The operators made 184 contacts across the country and with several other countries.

Amateur Radio Field Day has provided excellent training and situational awareness among the Amateur Radio operators in Edgefield County over the past few years.  Working as a team they have become proficient in being able to set up remote sites for communications by coming up with a plan and implementing it.  They are flexible and able to adapt when the plans need to be changed due to weather or other unforeseen circumstances.

In a provisional appeal for volunteers to assist, Alister ZS1OK, of HAMNET Western Cape, says that a total of six operators with three vehicles are required to assist with communications for the Wildrunner Cape Winter Trail Series race taking place in the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve at Kleinmond on Saturday, the 10th of August.

Two operators are required at the base. The other two vehicles, with two operators each, will be posted to two other locations along the route.  One vehicle is normally required at the Betty’s Bay side of the river, and a high clearance vehicle for this will be an advantage.

Any Hamnet operator able and willing to assist, is please to email Alister at zs1ok.alister@gmail.com.

Operators need to be at the start point in Kleinmond by 06h45 for the event briefing.  The event typically concludes by 14h00.

Seismologists are nervously watching the tectonic activity along America’s West coast after 2 major earthquakes in the last couple of days.

Saturday morning, at 05h19 our time, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck California just North East of Los Angeles, and about 100km  from Death Valley. 74000 people live within 100km of the epicentre at a depth of 17km.

Aljazeera, quoted by News24, says that tTop of Form

tt  tttt   he shallow quake struck near the small city of Ridgecrest and followed a 6.4-magnitude quake that hit the same area the day before.

The latest earthquake was 11 times stronger than the previous day’s “foreshock”, according to the US Geological Survey, and is part of what seismologists are calling an “earthquake sequence”.

The tremor was felt more than 240km away in Los Angeles, where the fire department deployed vehicles and helicopters to check on damage and residents in need of emergency aid.

The earthquake was the largest in southern California since 1999 when a 7.1-magnitude quake struck the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base, according to The Los Angeles Times.

The tremor sent Ridgecrest residents fleeing outside for safety and reporting continued  aftershocks, with one woman saying she was “not comfortable” about heading back inside for the night.

The quake revived fears of the “Big One” – a powerful tremor along the San Andreas Fault that could devastate major cities in southern California.

On Thursday, Caltech seismologist Lucy Jones had warned a press conference that there was “about a one-in-20 chance that this location will be having an even bigger earthquake within the next few days, and that we have not yet seen the biggest earthquake of the sequence.”

On Friday, Jones tweeted: “You know we say we have a 1 in 20 chance that an earthquake will be followed by something bigger? This is that 1 in 20 chance.”

HAMNET hopes that there will not be “something bigger” in the next few days, and asks operators to be mindful of the HF emergency frequencies used worldwide. Please listen carefully before transmitting on 20, 40 and 80 metres, and, even if you only hear some transmissions down in the noise floor, please give a wide berth to frequencies potentially being used.

This is Dave Reece  ZS1DFR  reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

The Sun is the largest source of energy in the solar system. This sphere of hot plasma occasionally sends out charged particles that can create havoc to electronics orbiting our planet, and are fatal for astronauts in space.

In order to get a closer look at such solar events, NASA has previously launched solar missions like ‘Parker’, designed to touch the star. The latest in line to map the Sun and its effects on space weather is ‘Punch,’ set to launch in August 2022.

PUNCH stands for the “Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere”. The aim of the mission will be to study the complex relationships between the Sun’s blistering outer layer, the corona, and the heliosphere, the Sun’s range of influence that extends up to Pluto. The mission will orbit very close to the Earth, only 350 miles up and will track and image solar wind leaving the Sun. The spacecraft is composed of four separate probes, each one no larger than a suitcase.

As the solar particles interact with Earth’s magnetic field, the impacted space weather can have a significant effect on radio communications and the Global Positioning System (GPS). With PUNCH, scientists hope to unravel these dynamics and also other solar weather events such as coronal mass ejections, which can find their way into the Earth’s path, hindering satellites and disrupting the power system.

According to NASA, PUNCH is a small mission, as per the space agency’s standards, not priced more than $165 million. One of the probes of the spacecraft will carry a narrow-field imager looking at the polarized light from the Sun. PUNCH will be the first mission with the sensitivity and polarization capability to routinely track solar wind in 3D.

NASA scientists believe that by studying this phenomenon, they will be able better to predict solar wind and prevent damage to technology and astronauts in space.

Along with PUNCH, NASA is also gearing up for a second mission “Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites”, or TRACERS which will explore Earth’s northern magnetic cusp region and how it interacts with Sun’s magnetic fields.

Southgate Amateur Radio News reports that 14,300 people attended the Ham Radio 2019 event in Friedrichshafen, down from the 15,460 in 2018 and the 17,400 in 2009. A translation of the DARC post reads:

The 44th HAM RADIO event together with the 70th Lake Constance meeting ended on Sunday [June 23] with the conclusion of 14300 visitors. “That’s a very good value,” summarizes Petra Rathgeber of the exhibition project management. Anyway, this results in a generally positive picture of the weekend. We talked to many exhibitors, volunteers and visitors during the Sunday tour and consistently heard the statement “satisfied”.

The date for the 45th HAM RADIO and the 71st Lake Constance meeting has already been decided:  June 26-28, 2020, again at the Friedrichshafen Exhibition Centre. With that, Europe’s biggest amateur radio show returns to its traditional last weekend in June. We look forward to seeing you again on Lake Constance!

Reporting in Univadis Medical News, researchers say they have developed a new tool to monitor people for cardiac arrest contactlessly, by detecting agonal, or gasping, breathing using a smart speaker such as a smartphone or a device such as Amazon Alexa.

Using real-world audio of agonal breathing heard on emergency calls for cardiac arrests, researchers trained a support vector machine (SVM) to accurately classify agonal breathing instances. The researchers also trained the SVM to detect interfering sounds such as air conditioning as well as instances of abnormal breathing captured during sleep studies.

On average, the proof-of-concept tool detected agonal breathing events 97 per cent of the time over the phone from up to 6 metres away.

The team envisions the algorithm could function like an app, or a skill for Alexa that runs passively on a smart speaker or smartphone while people sleep. And they now plan to commercialise the tool.

Writing in npj Digital  Medicine, the authors said the increasing adoption of commodity smart speakers in private residences and hospital environments may provide a wide-reaching means to realise the potential of a contactless cardiac arrest detection system.

The website phys.org reports that scientists have finally found malaria’s Achilles’ heel, namely a neurotoxin that isn’t harmful to any living thing except Anopheles mosquitoes that spread malaria.

Progress fighting the disease is threatened, as Anopheles develop resistance to chemical insecticides used to control them. There is also great concern about toxic side effects of the chemicals.

An international team led by Sarjeet Gill, distinguished professor of molecular, cell and systems biology at UC Riverside, has identified a neurotoxin produced by a bacteria, and determined how it kills Anopheles. Their work is detailed in a paper published in Nature Communications.

“Identifying the mechanisms by which the bacteria targets Anopheles has not been easy,” Gill said. “We were excited not only to find the neurotoxin, called PMP1, but also several proteins that likely protect PMP1 as it’s being absorbed in the mosquito’s gut.

Clearly, the next problem is going to be finding a way to get the neurotoxin into every female Anopheles mosquito. Stand by with bated breath for the next episode in this developing story!

Another report from Keith Lowes, ZS5WFD, says that HAMNET KZN has been invited to a “Breakfast Session” being held on Monday 01 July 2019 to showcase the current technology and services provided by the Emergency Mobilising and Communication Centre, which is a 24/7 operation positioned within the Disaster Management Centre for eThekwini Municipality.

The Emergency Centre handles incoming calls and Despatch/Mobilisation in the various regions for the Fire Services, Metro Police unit and Disaster Management branch. Internal and external stakeholders have been invited to participate in this session that will involve presentations and a question and answer session.

HAMNET KZN will also have a display of Amateur Radio equipment in their dedicated radio room within the Disaster Management Operations Centre.

Thanks for that news, Keith, and good luck with the presentation.

This Dave Reece  ZS1DFR  reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

As an example of a newspaper cover of the Field Day exercise taking place in America this weekend, here’s a report from Fair Lawn, in New Jersey.

Members of the Fair Lawn Radio Amateur Club will be participating in the national Amateur Radio Field Day exercise, beginning  Saturday, June 22nd at 2PM and ending Sunday, June 23rd at 1PM local time. The venue will be Memorial Park, c/o Avenue of Heroes/Berdan Avenue  in Fair Lawn. The event is open to everyone and refreshments will be served.

This year’s theme will feature a weekend of science and technology focused on radio science. The club will offer working demonstrations and present visitors with the opportunity to look at the Sun through a solar telescope to learn about its impact upon radio communications on earth; a satellite station offering the opportunity to communicate with orbiting satellites (and, quite possibly, the International Space Station); a chance to “get on the air” and talk with others around the country; to see a high frequency radio alternative to local land-based cellular communication; and to watch demonstrations of both the latest and earliest forms of radio transmitting.

As usual, the club will partner with other ham radio operators across North America establishing temporary ham radio stations in public locations during Field Day weekend, to showcase the science and skill of Amateur Radio. This year the Fair Lawn club will feature four working radio stations. “Field Day”, an annual event since 1933, demonstrates ham radio’s ability to work reliably under any conditions from almost any location and create an independent communications network. Ham operators train and prepare to support emergency communications by providing radio links when other communications channels aren’t working. The previous year’s hurricane disasters in Puerto Rico, Florida and Texas highlighted the value of amateur radio, which provided communications lifelines when all other methods were disabled.

This year’s event  also showcases the club’s work in public service. “In disasters, we’ve learned that cell towers won’t work and ham operators play a huge role when that happens.” said Brad Kerber, President of the Fair Lawn club. “Ham radio functions completely independent of the Internet or cell phone infrastructure, and can be set up almost anywhere in minutes. That’s the beauty of amateur radio during a communications outage.” “Hams can literally throw a wire in a tree for an antenna, connect it to a battery-powered transmitter and communicate halfway around the world,” Kerber added. “In today’s electronic do-it-yourself (DIY) environment, ham radio remains one of the best ways for people to learn about electronics, physics, meteorology, and numerous other scientific disciplines, and is a huge asset to any community during disasters if the standard communications infrastructure goes down.” Amateur radio remains contemporary and more important than ever!

Thanks to the TAPinto Fair Lawn online news service for this excerpt.

Southgate Amateur Radio News reports that the Radio Society of Australia (RASA) has written to the Australian Government radio regulator seeking an increase in output power from 400W to 1kW for advanced class amateurs.

RASA Secretary, Dr. Andrew Smith, VK6AS, produced a research/ background paper on how the issues of higher power at HF and EMR/I/C limits are managed in other countries.

The paper concludes that:

• there is no health or occupational health reason preventing power limits for (Australian) Radio Amateurs in the HF/VHF/UHF bands to be increased; and
• there is little or no evidence that suggests that an increase in power will increase complaints of RFI.

This seems to me to be a very progressive step, and would bring Australian regulations in line with large portions of the Amateur radio world. Let’s hope the request is granted.

Now to Friedrichshafen, Germany, where Delegations from ARRL and the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) are currently attending HAM RADIO 2019, the popular international Amateur Radio exhibition. Each year, a contingent from ARRL attends HAM RADIO, greeting its non-US members and networking with other national radio societies. Billed as Europe’s biggest Amateur Radio convention, HAM RADIO 2019 takes place from June the 21st to the 23rd on the shores of Lake Constance.

Attending on behalf of the IARU are President Tim Ellam, VE6SH/G4HUA; Secretary David Sumner, K1ZZ, and past IARU Secretary and ARRL President (1995 – 2000) Rod Stafford, W6ROD.

This year’s event marks the 44th HAM RADIO exhibition and the 70th Lake Constance Convention of Radio Amateurs, sponsored by Germany’s IARU member-society, the Deutscher Amateur Radio Club (DARC). The convention theme this year is “Amateur Radio on Tour.”

DARC Press Spokesperson Stephanie Heine, DO7PR, points out, “Radio amateurs know no bounds and are on land and water as well as in the air with their mobile ‘ham radio shacks.’ They like having the option of being reachable all over the world on their expeditions and getting to know new friends.”

Thanks to the ARRL Letter for those notes.

The indefatigable Keith Lowes ZS5WFD and his band of men are at it again, gearing themselves up for an event. He writes:

We have had almost a week’s rest since the Comrades Marathon so before we get withdrawal symptoms, our next event is the Scottburgh to Brighton Sand & Surf Marathon.

HAMNET KZN provided communications for this event yesterday, the  22^nd June 2019. The event covered 46.5Km starting at Scottburgh on the South Coast, a compulsory check in at the beach in Amanzimtoti, and finishing at Brighton Beach on the Bluff in Durban. This is one of South Africa’s premier ocean paddling races and is definitely a blue ribbon event on the surfski calendar. Having begun in 1958, the event proudly holds the title of the oldest long distance surfski race in the world.  The race started at 06H30 provided that it was sufficiently light to ensure paddlers safety. Were weather conditions to be deemed dangerous, today was to be the alternate date.

Categories included double and single ski’s, kneeboard paddlers, and runners on the beach.

14 Hamnet operators were positioned at key points along the route to be able to advise the control station at Athlone Park of any incidents.  Communications were maintained with Inshore Rescue Boats(IRB’s) via a commercial simplex radio channel.  This was a joint operation involving Hamnet, Lifesaving South Africa, NSRI and eThekwini Lifeguards.

A Control Station was established at Athlone Park in Amanzimtoti, giving full 2M simplex radio coverage of the event.

Keep up the good work, Keith – you and your team are certainly putting the rest of HAMNET SA to shame!

This is Dave Reece  ZS1DFR  reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

We are again indebted to Keith Lowes, ZS5WFD, this time for a report on the Comrades Marathon run last Sunday. He says that this year’s event saw 29 operators positioned at selected refreshment points, along with 2 operators each at the Durban Disaster Management Centre and Scottsville Race Course JOC respectively, giving a total of 33.

“With the large number of operators required,  a joint operation between HAMNET, REACT (Radio Emergency Associated Citizen Teams using CB Radio on Ch 24 & 21) and LCCSA (Land Cruiser Club of SA) was implemented, with relay stations situated at strategic points to facilitate interoperability.  When all is said and done, we all have an interest in radio, and we were able to come together as a team and provide a solution.  My thanks to Guy ZR5GB who co-ordinated the assistance of the LCCSA members.

“Justin ZS5JW and Kimmy ZS5KIM were plunged into the deep-end this year and did an absolutely first class job of handling the Durban JOC, being operational from 04H30.  They managed all radio traffic from water tables up until Cato Ridge, when Keith ZS5WFD and Willem ZS5WA at the Pietermaritzburg JOC took over.   The Finish JOC only closed down at 20H00 after having had an early start at 7am.

“WhatsApp was used to great effect in support of normal radio traffic until around 16H00 when overloading of the cellular networks became a problem due to the large number of runners and spectators at the finish putting pressure on it.  This also had an effect on officials that were using PTT  radio systems reliant on the cellular network backbone. Good old fashioned VHF/UHF analogue radio did not suffer from this problem and continued to operate normally.

“I am pleased to report that no serious medical incidents were reported on the road, although an extensive medical plan was in place with Netcare 911 managing the event.  They had deployed 16 ambulances, 6 rapid response vehicles with Advanced Life Support, as well as 6 motor bikes with paramedics.  A helicopter was also on standby.  A full trauma centre was  established within the finish venue.  Quite a number of medical requests were made to their representatives in the JOC’s both at Durban and Pietermaritzburg and in a number of cases the runners had recovered sufficiently to continue with the race before they arrived.  Others just retired and were picked up by the rescue (bailer) buses. A number of requests for additional water and Arnica Ice for tired, aching and cramping muscles were received, but due to congestion on the route it was not possible to get additional supplies to these water points timeously.

“With over 20,000 runners and hundreds of spectators, it is always a  concern to respond to incidents on the route safely, and response times will never be as quick as would be achieved under normal road conditions.

“Justin ZS5KT at Essex Terrace in Westville had a number of issues at Table 3 with camera crews on motorbikes getting far too close to runners.  The directive issued had been to maintain a safe distance of at least 30 metres from runners.

“A bottleneck caused by major roadwork’s in the vicinity to 45^th Cutting at Sherwood also resulted in large groups of runners crossing over onto the Durban bound carriageway of the M13 freeway which was open for normal traffic.  Video and still footage has been submitted by Justin and will be forwarded to the race organisers at the de-briefing.  These incidents were all reported to the JOC and logged accordingly.

“The initial plan was to link the Midlands Amateur Radio Club (MARC) 145.750 repeater to the Highway Amateur Radio Club (HARC) 145.625 repeater, but local interference was causing the 750 to lock up the 625.  Mike ZS5ML and Koos ZS5KDK were able to unlink them and we operated them in stand-alone mode.  Good use was also made of cross-band mobile repeaters, and a list with frequency/CTCSS tone allocations was circulated to avoid interference between users.

“Unfortunately due to my work commitments and the passing of OM Glen ZS5GD last year, who put in many long hours at the Expo with me in the past, we did not participate in the Comrades Expo that was held from 06 to 08 June 2019.

“Once again I extend my thanks to all of the operators that worked together to ensure the safety of all participants and spectators, as without you our task would be impossible.” Close quotation.

Thanks for the excellent report Keith. It looks as though the runners were safer because of your combined presence.

From SKA Global Headquarters, comes a report that the SKA Organisation has followed closely the recent developments towards creating constellations of satellites that aim to offer wireless broadband access in remote areas.

Prof. Philip Diamond, the SKA Director-General says “Innovation and societal impact are at the heart of our mission to deliver the world’s largest radio telescope, and indeed we feel some community pride that Wi-Fi itself originated as a globally-significant spin-off from fundamental radio astronomy research.

“Radio astronomers have been engaged for decades in the work of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) – a United Nations Agency – to regulate the international use of the radio frequency spectrum. Their efforts ensured a limited number of narrow bands of the spectrum received protection in the 1960s to allow radio astronomy to develop and conduct essential and unique research.

“Over the years however, there has been growing pressure on the spectrum due to the arrival of novel technologies. However, at the same time radio astronomy has developed extensively beyond those bands to remain at the forefront of scientific breakthroughs. In the case of the SKA, our eventual ability to observe the sky across a large part of the radio spectrum continuously, promises a wealth of discoveries in an extremely broad range of science disciplines.

“Whilst there is legislation in place at the two SKA sites in Australia and South Africa to protect the telescopes from ground-based radio interference at those frequencies, the use of air and space-borne radio communications is regulated on a collaborative international basis, often coordinated through the ITU.

“As a global project, we firmly believe in the power of collaboration. As a sector member of ITU, we are engaging directly with companies such as SpaceX to explore mitigation options and initiatives that could be applied  to ensure that the large-scale investments in the SKA and other radio telescopes, their discovery potential and the likely spin-offs coming out of their development, are safeguarded, while these new developments in telecommunications, with their obvious broader societal benefits, flourish.

“Recent public statements from SpaceX officials are reassuring in this respect and we remain optimistic that the development of such satellite constellations can be compatible with radio astronomy, preserving our ability as a society to continue advancing our knowledge about our universe.

“We look forward to further cooperation to evolve a radio astronomy friendly environment.” Close quote.

Perhaps the SKA and SpaceX’s goals ARE compatible after all.

This is Dave Reece  ZS1DFR  reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.