As Radio Amateurs in Indonesia responded for the second time to an Earthquake in the Lombok area on Tuesday, the Indonesia Amateur Radio Organisation, or ORARI, asked all amateurs please to take care to avoid causing QRM to their activities on 7.110MHz, and emergency activities on satellite IO-86.

The second powerful earthquake in the area killed at least 98 people and seriously injured more than 200 others. The electricity supply in the area was disrupted and the ORARI of West Nusa Tenggara Region, led by YB9KA and YB9GV, have taken action to cover areas with no cellular coverage, including taking battery supplies to affected repeaters. At the moment four repeaters are operating in the disaster area, and ORARI HQ has asked their Bali Island Region (the closest area) to provide further repeater support for use during emergency communications in Lombok.

ORARI HQ has also issued an official request to the nearest region, to help with both logistics and personnel to Lombok, designated a National Frequency for the Lombok Earthquake at 7.110 MHz for HF, VHF on 145.500 MHz Simplex and 147.000 MHz Duplex, and also to activate the ORARI Satellite LAPAN IO-86, to assist with communications.

The Central Java Region of the Indonesian Search And Rescue Council has sent a group of rescuers and vehicles, lead by YB2QC, the Operation and Technical Head of ORARI, to join the National Rescue Operation in Lombok, and ORARI Jakarta is also arranging the delivery of logistical assistance to Lombok.

And after this report, news came in on Thursday of a third earthquake in the region, magnitude 5.9, and likely to affect nearly 3 million people living within a 50km radius.

Dani reports again: Entering the sixth day of post-Earthquake 7 SR which shook the region in West Nusa Tenggara and Bali, emergency handling was further intensified. The emergency response period for handling the impact of earthquakes in West Nusa Tenggara ended on 08/08/2018. However, considering the many problems in handling the impact of the earthquake, the Governor of West Nusa Tenggara finally decided to extend the 14-day emergency response period, which is now calculated from August 12 to the 25th, 2018.

Conditions in the field reveal many problems, such as the victims who still have to be evacuated, refugees who have not been handled adequately, the aftershocks that are still going on, and even earthquakes that damage and cause casualties. With the establishment of an emergency response period there is easy access for personnel deployment, resource use, budget use, procurement of logistics and equipment, and administration so that the handling of disaster impacts becomes faster.

The number of earthquake victims continues to increase. As of today (Saturday 11/08/2018), 387 people are recorded as having died.

Mr. Erdius (YBØQA), as Head of Operations and Technical Affairs on behalf of ORARI HQ, has sent 1 unit of VHF Repeater and 10 VHF Handy Talkies, to facilitate communication in all fields.

This update was received on August 11, 2018, 20:39 Local Time (13:39 UTC) from Dani YB2TJV.

The ARRL reports Amateur Radio Emergency Service® (ARES®) volunteers have pitched in to assist where needed to provide or support communication as catastrophic wild-fires have struck California.

Volunteers from multiple ARRL Sections in the state have stepped up to help, as some fires remain out of control. The fires have claimed several lives, destroyed more than 1,000 homes, and forced countless residents to evacuate, including radio amateurs.

ARRL Sacramento Valley Section Emergency Coordinator (SEC) Greg Kruckewitt, KG6SJT, said this week that things have calmed somewhat compared to the past couple of weeks, with American Red Cross shelter communicators stepping down after 10 days of support. Initially, there were four shelters in Redding. On August 5, the Shasta-Tehama ARES team was able to take its communications trailer to Trinity County to support a shelter in Weaverville opened for Carr Fire evacuees, he said.

CalFire reports that the Carr Fire in Shasta and Trinity counties covers more than 167,000 acres and is 47% contained. Evacuations and road closures are in effect. At one point, more than a dozen ARES volunteers from Shasta, Sacramento, Butte, Placer, and El Dorado counties were working at shelters opened in the wake of the Carr Fire.

Kruckewitt said Winlink was the go-to mode, as fire has damaged several repeaters and no repeater path exists to the Gold County Region of the Red Cross in Sacramento.

Thank you to the ARRL news for this coverage.

BBC News reports that the Parker Solar Probe, set to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida yesterday, Saturday the 11th, has been delayed for 24 hours.

It is now scheduled to blast off – on board the mammoth Delta-IV Heavy rocket – this Sunday morning. The probe is set to become the fastest-moving manmade object in history. The rocket was on the launch pad when the countdown clock was interrupted, as officials investigated an alarm. NASA had a weather window of 65 minutes to launch, but the time elapsed before the issue could be resolved.

The probe aims to dip directly into our star’s outer atmosphere, or corona.

Its data promises to crack longstanding mysteries about the Sun’s behaviour – assuming it can survive roasting temperatures above 1,000C.

The Delta will hurl the probe into the inner Solar System, enabling the Nasa mission to zip past Venus in six weeks and make a first rendezvous with the Sun a further six weeks after that.

Over the course of seven years, Parker will make 24 loops around our star to study the physics of the corona, the place where much of the important activity that affects the Earth seems to originate.

The probe will dip inside this tenuous atmosphere, sampling conditions, and getting to just 6.16 million km  from the Sun’s broiling “surface”.

“I realise that might not sound that close, but imagine the Sun and the Earth were a metre apart. Parker Solar Probe would then be just 4cm away from the Sun,” explained Dr Nicky Fox, the British-born project scientist who is affiliated to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

“We’ll also be the fastest human-made object ever, travelling around the Sun at speeds of up to 690,000km/h.”

Wow! I doubt if any traffic cops will catch that one for speeding!

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