Tropical Cyclone Berguitta-18 has been moving South-West all week, missing Madagascar, but pummelling Reunion and Mauritius, and other small French Islands to the East of Madagascar. The FaceBook page entitled “Mauritius Cyclone Updates” has some vivid video of ravines and rivers coming down in torrential flood, threatening to wash bridges and properties away. There has not been much news in the press of damage or loss of life, and Saturday’s reports say that Berguitta had weakened into a moderate tropical storm by Friday evening. Presumably the flooding will take a week or so to subside. HAMNET is not aware of any emergency traffic being passed from that area.
Meanwhile a tropical depression has been present in the Mozambique channel for the last few days, but does not seem to be moving Southwards, so stormy conditions in Mozambique or over the North-East of South Africa have not been experienced. We’ll keep our eye on that one.
Arrangements are being made with the Western Cape HAMNET Division, for the two sporting events soon to happen in the Cape. The 99er Cycle Tour takes place on Saturday 10th February, where at least 16 of our volunteers will do their stuff along the way. Plans are at an advanced stage for that one. And I have been contacted by the organisers of the Two Ocean’s Marathon, on Easter Saturday, to start the wheels turning amongst the HAMNET operators who are already starting to volunteer for that. If you are a Western Cape HAMNET Member, and would like to assist us, please contact the writer at ZS1DFR@TELKOMSA.NET. Thank you.
From the ARRL letter of this week is the news that uncharacteristically cold weather in central Florida in early January prompted members of the North Brevard Amateur Radio Club (K4NBR) to assist the area’s homeless population. The New Year began with a bitter cold front descending upon central Florida, bringing below-freezing temperatures, especially concerning for those lacking regular shelter from the elements. NBARC members Ricky Deluco, K4JTT; Robert Ortiz, KJ4VEH; William Klosowski, K4SVT, and Michael Ellixson, KE4MWZ, set out in their own vehicles, searching the city of Titusville for homeless residents. For the next two evenings, and using Amateur Radio as communications, the group worked in the cold, wet weather for more than 12 hours, logging some 190 Km on the roads around Titusville.
The Disabled American Veteran Centre in Titusville had opened its doors as a cold weather shelter and offered a warm place to sleep and eat. The ham radio group alerted local law enforcement, so they were aware of the effort, and in the hope that on-duty officers might also reach out. The group was able to locate five homeless individuals on its first evening tour of the town and provide them with transportation out of the cold. Local police also contacted the team to help and to provide transportation for other homeless individuals located by on-duty officers.
One additional homeless person located late on the first night had a need for immediate medical attention and was transported to a local hospital. — Thanks to Ricky Deluco, K4JTT
From the same source, we are told that a November 2017 Department of Defence (DoD)-sponsored communications interoperability exercise involving Amateur Radio was a success, according to information received from US Army Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS) Program Manager Paul English, WD8DBY. The November 4-6 drill, which focused on interoperability between DoD elements including MARS, other federal agencies, and the Amateur Radio community, simulated a coronal mass ejection (CME) event. Army and Air Force MARS organizations worked in conjunction with the Amateur Radio community, primarily on the 60-meter interoperability channels as well as on HF NVIS frequencies and local VHF and UHF, non-internet linked Amateur Radio repeaters.
The Amateur Radio portion of the exercise kicked off with a high-power information broadcast on 60-meter channel 1 (5,330.5 kHz) from a military station on the east coast and the Fort Huachuca HF gateway station in Arizona. The high-power broadcast provided basic exercise information and requested that amateur stations make contact with MARS stations on 60 meters and provide county-by-county status reports for the 3,143 US counties and county equivalents, in order to gain situational awareness and to determine the extent of impact of the scenario. Radio amateurs also were given the opportunity to submit a reception report and receive a QSL card.
“Leaders from the supported DoD headquarters as well as the chiefs of both the Army and Air Force MARS programs appreciated the nearly 2,000 Amateur Radio stations that trained during this exercise,” English said. — Thanks to US Army MARS Program Manager Paul English, WD8DBY, and The ARRL ARES E-Letter.
Exciting news comes from Mars, the planet, where the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) investigated eight steep and eroded slopes (known as “scarps”) at various locations across Mars. At each of these locations, they found thick shelves of relatively pure water ice located as little as 1 meter below the planet’s surface. Furthermore, some of these massive ice deposits were found to be more than 100 meters thick.
According to the research paper, “The ice exposed by the scarps likely originated as snow that transformed into massive ice sheets, now preserved beneath less than 1 to 2 [metres] of dry and ice-cemented dust or regolith near ±55° latitude.” In 2008, the Phoenix Mars Lander discovered similar ice deposits along Martian scarps, but they were found in regions much closer to the planet’s northern pole.
The discovery of these large reservoirs of pure water ice adds yet another piece of evidence supporting the increasingly held theory that water ice not only exists on Mars, but also is surprisingly common. Although the ice could obviously be used as a source of water for future manned missions to Mars, scientists have a long way to go before then. However, with the Mars 2020 rover just a few years away, the discovery of eight more tantalizing sites ripe for investigation is still an exciting find.
This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.