RED alerts for two earthquakes in quick succession in Myanmar were issued by GDACS on Friday morning. The first, a magnitude 7.7, struck at 06h21 UTC at a depth of 10km, and exposed a population of over 6 million to severe shaking. The second, a 6.4 magnitude quake, struck in a nearby area at 06h32 UTC, and endangered the lives of 1.85 million people. At the time of recording this bulletin, casualty numbers have exceeded 1000, with over 2000 people injured, and there is a ghastly YouTube video going round of an incomplete 30-storey building collapsing completely, with workers trapped within. Naturally, transport and communications are severely affected.

Mybroadband.co.za says that insurers have recently warned that extreme weather occurrences, including freakishly strong winds and wind funnels such as tornadoes, are becoming more common in South Africa due to climate change. Local tornado occurrences are not completely unprecedented, with recorded sightings dating back as far as 1905 and multiple formations detected annually.

Meteorologists have generally not focused on these dangerous wind funnels due to their rarity and relatively limited impact compared to other storms.

However, it may surprise some that tornadoes have been responsible for dozens of deaths and injuries in South Africa over the past few decades, and substantial damage to thousands of homes and other buildings.

An article in Wikipedia lists at least 31 significant tornadoes between 1948 and 2025, 18 of which resulted in fatalities.

The most devastating in terms of loss of life occurred in the small Eastern Cape town of Mount Ayliff, on 19 January 1999.

That tornado was classified as F4 on the Fujita scale, with wind speeds between 333km/h and 420km/h, sufficient to throw cars and large objects a considerable distance.

An unclassified category tornado that caused 18 fatalities and 150 injuries in Mthatha just over a month earlier likely made more headlines as former President Nelson Mandela was nearly one of its victims. He was at a pharmacy when the tornado hit but was shielded by his bodyguards while lying on the floor.

Over the past year, there have been at least two confirmed tornadoes, both of which occurred in mid-2024. The stronger of these ripped through parts of Tongaat, KwaZulu-Natal, on 3 June 2024, with wind speeds in the range of 218km/h to 266km/h. It claimed the lives of 12 people while causing R1.3 billion in infrastructure damage.

Just a day after that, another tornado was spotted moving between Newcastle and Utrecht, although its path resulted in minimal damage.

On Friday, the British ham radio channel TX Factor released its latest video, an in-depth description of the use of the QO-100 satellite repeater station, and using a very smart up- and down-transverter made by DX Patrol.

The Portuguese company has released a second version of this transverter now, making it possible to convert any uplink radio to transmit on the 2.4 GHz band up to the satellite parked in geostationary orbit on 0 degrees latitude and longitude, and to convert the 10.5 GHz downlink frequency to a receive frequency of your choice as well.

So this is basically a one-box-does-most–of-the-heavy-lifting station accessory. To operate on QO-100, you need the DX Patrol, a transceiver to transmit, a separate receiver (preferably) to work full duplex and listen to yourself on the satellite, a GPS antenna to plug in to the DX Patrol unit, to position yourself correctly, and to generate a lock signal to keep the uplink stable, and then a satellite dish, as small as 40cm in diameter, with the necessary coax to send and receive signals.

Of course sophistication like this doesn’t come cheap, but, by the time you have assembled all the parts yourself, and patched them all together, you probably have invested as much in a homebrew station as in the DX Patrol version 2.

The video is available on YouTube, so look for the channel called TX Factor, and watch Bob McCreadie G0FGX set it all up and conduct an easy QSO.

A quick update of the Digital Library of Amateur Radio Communications (DLARC) from Kay Savetz K6KJN reveals that, so far, 149,500 items have been digitized and added, and that’s 19.5 terabytes of information. 1.1 million Pages of data were scanned in 2024 alone, so everything you can possibly think you might ever need is probably already there. Just google Digital Library of Amateur Radio Communications and you will be astounded at what has been compiled so far.

In another article, mybroadband.co.za announced on Thursday that MTN South Africa and low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite service company Lynk Global carried out a successful technical trial of one of the first satellite-to-mobile device phone calls in South Africa. The phone call, made in Vryburg, North West, allowed the companies to test voice call quality and SMS capabilities over an LEO satellite connection. It was conducted following ICASA’s approval of the use of radio frequencies on MTN-licensed IMT spectrum for the duration of the trial.

“The technical trial was part of our work to find potential solutions to the challenges of providing coverage in underserviced, rural and remote areas,” said MTN South Africa CEO Charles Molapisi. He said that the call was a proof-of-concept of MTN’s ability to complement its ground-based cell towers and other infrastructure with LEOs.

“The implications of potentially leveraging satellite partnerships will not only help MTN achieve its goal of 99% broadband population coverage but most importantly, benefit all South Africans,” Molapisi said.

Lynk Global chief commercial officer Dan Dooley said the successful trial was the first time that a satellite phone call was made in Africa using an unmodified phone.

“Importantly, this technology is device-agnostic, ensuring compatibility with existing mobile units and requiring no special modifications,” the companies said.

Satellite calls via older geosynchronous (GEO) satellites require expensive devices with specialised antennas and modems to enable transmission of data between Earth and GEO satellites orbiting at an altitude of 35,786km.

MTN said that LEO satellites typically orbit at altitudes between 160 km and 2,000 km, meaning that their orbital periods are between 90 minutes and a few hours.

“This is suitable for applications that need rapid data communication or frequent re-visits of specific areas,” the company said. “The lower altitude contributes to lower signal travel times, resulting in lower latency. This is crucial for real-time communication, video conferencing and online gaming.”

The mobile network added that direct satellite-to-phone contact offered several other potential benefits, including mass notification capabilities for critical alerts such as weather warnings, health advisories, and humanitarian updates in remote areas.

Thanks to mybroadband.co.za for both their contributions.

This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR, uncertain as to whether he should be using QO-100 or his mobile phone for a satellite contact, and reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

IOL.co.za says that KwaZulu-Natal’s continuous cycle of losing homes, rebuilding, and waiting for the next devastating floods has left communities emotionally drained and struggling to cope with the mental toll of disaster fatigue. The disaster-prone province has endured wave after wave of devastating floods, each leaving behind a trail of destruction, displacement, and grief.

Dr Kerry Frizelle, a counselling psychologist at the University of the Western Cape, said survivors of repeated disasters, such as the KZN floods, are experiencing disaster fatigue, a form of emotional exhaustion that has long-term consequences.

“The literature refers to disaster fatigue as a form of emotional exhaustion that builds up and occurs in response to disasters that happen repeatedly. Essentially, emotional fatigue results in demotivation and a decrease in behaviours that would help to address the disaster,” said Frizelle.

In April 2022, KZN was hit by one of the deadliest floods South Africa has ever recorded. Torrential rains caused rivers to swell, roads to collapse, and homes to be washed away. Over 430 people lost their lives, and thousands were left homeless as entire neighbourhoods in eThekwini, OThongathi, and surrounding areas were submerged.

Last month, another round of flash floods hit eThekwini, killing seven people and displacing many others. Roads and infrastructure damaged in 2022 still had not been fully repaired when the latest storms arrived. And weeks later, another deadly storm claimed two more lives. For some, it was the second time they had lost everything.

The repeated trauma of rebuilding only to lose everything again has left many frustrated.

Dr Frizelle explained that when disasters strike the same communities over and over again, this exhaustion evolves into community fatigue, where entire neighbourhoods feel defeated and less able to plan for future disasters.

“When a single disaster occurs, it is likely that you will see community mobilization and collective initiatives to respond and recover. But when the events persist or recur, people are likely to run out of physical and emotional resources.”

“They feel demotivated and helpless and are therefore less likely to respond as they would the first time the disaster occurred.”

She also linked disaster fatigue to the brain’s natural survival mechanisms.

“In dangerous or stressful situations, people’s brains and nervous systems are designed to activate the fight or flight response, they either actively confront the threat or try to escape it,” she explained.

“If neither of these is possible, the third response – freeze – occurs. This might explain what happens with disaster fatigue.”

Clearly, this is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in a different guise. Thanks to IOL for quoting Dr Frizelle.

The ARRL reports that the San Joaquin Valley Section conducted “Perfect Storm,” an amateur radio emergency exercise, on March 5 – 7.

 Section Emergency Coordinator (SEC) Dan Sohn, WL7COO, asked that a section-wide exercise be created that would engage both amateur radio operators and non-amateurs to become more active in their community’s emergency preparedness and response capabilities.

 There were 120 participants from 9 counties within the Section, and both amateurs and participants equipped with General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) radios gathered local situational awareness data. The exercise culminated with a two-hour period during which local groups forwarded their data to a mock Incident Command Post. At the same time, leaders of the groups were asked to participate in a live “hot wash” on Zoom, where the results were reviewed, and errors could be corrected in real time.

SJV Section Manager Steven Hendricks, KK6JTB, said the Perfect Storm exceeded expectations and SEC Sohn reported the exercise was a resounding success.

“We wanted to engage many different organizations and especially young hams,” said Hendricks. “It’s important to tap into their excitement and engage them so that, when a disaster does strike, they can become a vital part of the team.”  They plan to hold two similar such exercises per year in the future.

Here’s a brilliant idea, even if it is still functioning in its infancy.

A trio of physicists from Princeton University, CIT’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Spectral Sensor Solutions, is proposing the possibility of generating electricity using energy from the rotation of the Earth. In their study, published in the journal Physical Review Research, Christopher Chyba, Kevin Hand and Thomas Chyba tested a theory that electricity could be generated from the Earth’s rotation using a special device that interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field.

Over the past decade, members of the team have been toying with the idea of generating electricity using the Earth’s rotation and its magnetic field, and they even published a paper describing the possibility back in 2016. That paper was met with criticism because prior theories have suggested that doing so would be impossible because any voltage created by such a device would be canceled as the electrons rearrange themselves during the generation of an electric field.

The researchers wondered what would happen if this cancelation was prevented and the voltage instead captured. To find out, they built a special device consisting of a cylinder made of manganese-zinc ferrite, a weak conductor, which served as a magnetic shield. They then oriented the cylinder in a north-south direction set at a 57° angle. That made it perpendicular to both the Earth’s rotational motion and the Earth’s magnetic field.

Next, they placed electrodes at each end of the cylinder to measure voltage and then turned out the lights to prevent photoelectric effects. They found that 18 microvolts of electricity were generated across the cylinder that they could not attribute to any other source, strongly suggesting that it was due to the energy from the Earth’s rotation.

The researchers note that they accounted for the voltage that might have been caused by temperature differences between the ends of the cylinder. They also noted that no such voltage was measured when they changed its angle or used control cylinders.

The results will have to be verified by others running the same type of experiment under different scenarios to ensure that there were no other sources of electricity generation that they failed to account for. But the researchers note that if their findings turn out to be correct, there is no reason the amount produced could not be increased to a useful level.

Thank you to Phys.org/news for that enticing idea. If it is possible to scale the process up, we’d have a large amount of energy constantly available.

This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR, feeling dizzy at the thought of all the effects of rotation, and reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

Since last weekend, KwaZulu Natal has been experiencing extreme rainfall conditions. The death toll during the flooding has risen to nine individuals. An orange level 5 warning for severe thunderstorms across uMdoni, eThekwini, uMkhambathini, Ray Nkonyeni, and uMzumbe municipalities was issued, and Durban and the South Coast were hard hit.

The Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC, Rev Thulasizwe Buthelezi warned that the rain was expected to impact road infrastructure in and around the eThekwini Metro which was already experiencing flooding, underscoring the severity of the situation. About 160 affected people from Lamontville were relocated to temporary decent accommodation while a permanent solution for their discomfort was being sought.

ENCA reports that Gift of the Givers is expressing its frustration with the KwaZulu-Natal government. This comes as thousands have once again been displaced by heavy rains and flooding. The aid organization says government must stop reacting and put preventative measures in place.

Meanwhile, affected residents are trying to rebuild their lives as families come to terms with the loss of loved ones.

Human Settlements Minister Thembi Simelane was expected to visit Durban this past week to assess government’s response to the disaster.

As I transmit this, the Cape Town Cycle Tour, previously called the Argus Cycle Tour, is taking place. The 109km long route started anywhere from 06h15 to 08h57, depending on your seeding, and the shorter 42km race started at 10h00.

The cut off for the long race is 5pm, but the cut off for the 42km race is 2pm, so just 4 hours for the short race. The weather is predicted to be clear, and hopefully not too hot, but the killing factor is usually the wind, which can make life very difficult for the return trip from the southern peninsula back to the Cape Town finish.

HAMNET is not directly involved in the comms for this race, but we are always on standby if a disaster of some sort strikes. Our regional director Michael ZS1MJT has a daughter doing her first race today, so we’ll hear all the sweaty detail during the coming week.

Michael’s other daughter lives in Australia, in Brisbane to be precise, and on the promontory in front of Brisbane, directly exposed to Tropical Cyclone ALFRED, which will have crossed the shores from directly east by the time this bulletin is heard.

Australians have been watching the Cyclone for several days now, as it hovered a couple of hundred kilometres off the coast, and felt the dread build up, as ALFRED decided to take a very slow and leisurely approach to the coast line. Winds have been extreme, whipping up enormous waves, and rainfall has been aplenty, though, by Friday evening our time, the storm had not yet crossed the coast.

Michael reassures me that his daughter and her husband have very sensibly taken their campervan, and driven off 250km to the  west, and are staying at a camping resort until the storm has lost strength, which is expected to happen once ALFRED makes landfall.

The Queensland authorities have sensibly been very proactive in their preparations for the arrival of ALFRED, encouraging evacuations, shoring up coastal properties with sandbags, and opening shelters early in case houses are destroyed. By Friday evening, our time, 330000 houses were already without power.

The storm struck the coastline at about 1am Saturday morning, their time, and fortunately diminished in strength to become a Tropical Low, by definition. That didn’t stop 100 to 110 km/h winds, the uprooting of trees, damage to houses and cars, and the destruction of powerlines. As of Saturday evening, Australian time, no casualties had been reported.

Writing in theconversation.com, Savannah Meacham says that she is experiencing retraumatisation, where we re-live stress reactions experienced as a result of previous traumatic events when faced with a new, similar incident.

As a researcher in emergency responses to a broad range of disasters, Savannah says she understands why she is feeling like this. However, many people may not realize the stress they are experiencing right now is related to an earlier disaster or traumatic event in their life. That earlier disaster could be another cyclone, or a different event, such as a flood or bushfire.

Some signs and symptoms of retraumatisation might be:

Intrusive thoughts

Nightmares and having trouble sleeping

Hypervigilance (for example, feeling “on edge” all day)

Sensitivity to triggers such as loud noises

Feelings of isolation

Thinking about, planning or even attempting suicide

Panic attacks

Using/abusing substances, such as alcohol and other drugs, and

An increase in unhealthy behaviours (for example, being more prone to aggression or violence).

Cyclone Alfred may be awakening memories and feelings, and the re-emergence of those stress reactions can be confronting. It can feel like re-opening a wound that hasn’t quite healed.

People begin to understand the effects of being exposed to multiple disasters – bushfires, cyclones, floods, and let’s not forget the COVID pandemic – that erode our resilience.

This type of multiple exposure influences our feelings of safety, security and even our hope for the future, all increasing the risk of poorer mental health.

For people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), retraumatisation may cause them to relive their past traumas in intense detail. It can feel like past traumatic events are happening all over again.

Thank you to Savannah for explaining why we feel what we feel.

Well, one good thing, people, is that the threatening asteroid, named 2024 YR4, which was anticipated potentially to hit earth in 2032, has now been more precisely tracked, and the risk of collision with earth has been reduced from a 2.8% risk originally, and now stands at 0.001%, which is regarded in scientific circles as essentially zero! I’m sure you’ll agree this is very reassuring indeed.

This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR, feeling safe to hang out the washing after all, and reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

An unexpected Tropical Cyclone, called GARANCE, developed East of Madagascar this week suddenly, but, unlike others which usually travel west towards eastern Africa, this one travelled east and then south east.

Phys.org/news says that CYCLONE GARANCE barreled across La Reunion Island on Friday killing at least two people as fierce winds left destruction across the French Indian Ocean territory, according to authorities.

Winds of up to 230 kilometers per hour battered the territory of 900,000 people and the storm earlier forced the closure of the main airport on nearby Mauritius.

One woman in her 50s was probably sucked into a sewer pipe and swept away in torrential water, the local prefect said, describing the storm as “brutal and violent”. A man was killed in an electrical fire and another person is missing, the prefecture said.

Some 180,000 households were without power, 80,000 without water while 114,000 people had lost mobile phone coverage, according to authorities. Residents posted pictures online of uprooted trees, torn-off roofs and flooded homes. Entire streets were inundated and cars washed away.

Authorities imposed a maximum alert for several hours on Friday, confining the entire population—including law enforcement and emergency services—to homes and offices. That was eventually eased so that police and emergency services could get out but authorities still ordered the rest of the population to remain indoors.

GARANCE landed on the island’s north and shifted south before heading back out to sea. And, while the violent gusts and torrential rain eased, heavy rain and strong winds persisted.

Around 100 troops and firefighters were to be dispatched from Mayotte—a French territory nearly 1,500 kilometers away—as soon as weather conditions permit. Another 100 were to go there from mainland France.

La Reunion and Mauritius—around 225 kilometers to the northeast—had been on high alert since Wednesday. Mauritius shut its main airport on Wednesday, while La Reunion did the same on Thursday.

Curiously, there has been little mention in weather circles, of a fairly strong looking storm cell at the bottom corner of Madagascar, and appearing to be drifting in a south-easterly direction away from the coast of eastern South Africa. It looks more extreme than the cloud cover over the French Islands associated with GARANCE.

When Brian Jacobs ZS6YZ, formerly deputy National Director of HAMNET, sent me the report on the Ride for Sight last week, he included some other news of interest to us. He wrote:

“On Wednesday 19 February, Brian ZS6YZ, Leon ZS6LMG and Johan ZS6DMX attended a training session with the USAR SA-01 team at the Centurion Fire Station. It was yet another rainy day and the team practised their rope skills indoors in the huge hanger where the fire trucks are stored.

“Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) are a dedicated and highly skilled and trained team of search and rescue specialists from various municipal and provincial fire and EMS stations in Gauteng. HAMNET has been selected to be their communications specialists and we were requested to attend the USAR training to meet the team and to get to understand how they work and what their communications challenges would be in the field. HAMNET’s primary and only role is to provide communications to the team, both internally within the team and in the field wherever they may be needed.

“This could include underground in caves or mine shafts, in the water or in the mountains. Communications could be needed between the team and their base as well as back to the Disaster Management Centres to which they report. This could include international deployments, as the USAR teams worldwide are all trained to the same international UN standards coordinated by The International Search and Rescue Advisory Group (INSARAG).

“HAMNET and USAR SA have already started with formalising an agreement between them.”

Thanks Brian, and best wishes for rapid progress between the groups.

Those of you, like me, whose curiosity is still piqued by what happened to Malaysian flight MH370, over 10 years ago, may be interested to know that the new search that has been started by a private underwater search and rescue company, is being reported on daily by a YouTube channel called “Airline News with Geoffrey Thomas”.

Some months ago, the amateur fraternity was split over some research done by a British Aerospace Engineer called Richard Godfrey, our own Dr Hannes Coetzee ZS6BZP, and Professor Simon Maskell, who published a lengthy paper called “The MH370 Case Study” describing how they had used perturbations in WSPR transmissions between Australia and Switzerland, to demonstrate a path for the metal aircraft that was MH-370 in the southerly direction it appeared to have taken that night. Their research showed that the search area previously studied did not include the likely resting place at the bottom of the ocean.

Naysayers in the amateur radio community thought it highly unlikely that you could prove anything with WSPR perturbations, but the organisers of the new search are taking all suggestions seriously, and the physics of unexpected fluctuations in weak signal propagation have encouraged the searchers to look at the possibilities created by the research.

Anyway, Geoffrey Thomas and Richard Godfrey co-host a daily 20 minute video, which has been going for the last 8 days or so, and can be easily found on YouTube, if you want to see what the ship called Armada 78 06 has done so far, and what its unmanned underwater robots have scanned. As of Friday night, nothing had come to light, when the ship returned to Freemantle for provisions and fuel. Most of the results of the deep sea scans (at 4600 metres below the surface, mind you) will only become available later as their scans of the ocean floor are analysed.

The search area is amongst some Tropical Cyclones, but the seas are reasonably manageable now, and the search will continue by the private company, on a no find, no fee basis.

When I wrote about Brian Jacobs ZS6YZ, higher up in this bulletin, I didn’t yet know he has been promoted to Top Brass in the HAMNET organisation. Grant Southey ZS6GS has stepped down, and his space taken by Brian, who has been very active in matters amateur radio, the field of beacons, and the work of HAMNET Gauteng. So Brian is no stranger to us, or to the responsibility he will carry, and I wish him well. Congratulations too, to Keith Howes, ZS5WFD, who assumes deputy national directorship in Brian’s footsteps. Keith already has a big reputation in HAMNET organizational skills.

I also thank Grant ZS6GS for the leadership roles he has played for at least 10 years, and wish him well in his retirement.

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