In a follow-up to the petition to the FCC to refuse the use of amateur frequencies between 430 and 440MHz by a space-based internet service called AST SpaceMobile, the FCC has granted the service limited use of the 430–440 MHz amateur radio band. The license grants use of amateur radio spectrum for emergency purposes only.
The IARU relays that the volume of comments filed by amateur radio organizations and operators contributed to the limited grant by the FCC Space Bureau. The IARU continues to maintain that AST SpaceMobile has failed to show a legitimate need to utilize amateur radio spectrum.
Hopefully, there will be recourse to appeal this allocation in the future, if interference to ham activity becomes more and more intrusive.
This is a quick warning of a moderate tropical storm BLOSSOM, which has arisen north east of the tip of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It is not threatening any landmass yet, and has wind speeds of about 75km/h, so is of no great concern at present. GDACS will continue to follow it, and report daily on its position.
The ARRL letter of 11th September says that Amateur radio volunteers serving in the ARRL Amateur Radio Emergency Service and the National Weather Service SKYWARN program were active over the weekend. They were serving their communities in New England as tornado-warned storms moved across New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Five EF1 tornadoes struck the central Massachusetts communities of Paxton, Holden, Berlin and Stow.
A squall line of severe thunderstorms that would eventually have embedded tornadoes in central Massachusetts swept across the region. SKYWARN nets were activated on repeaters across the area. Reports came in rapidly of downed trees and wires, as well as hail up to 20mm in diameter in western Massachusetts, with radio amateurs sharing critical damage reports from this area. In addition, reports of damage were received in all of the tornado path areas in near real time and were shared with the National Weather Service, Boston / Norton Weather Forecast Office, WX1BOX, amateur radio team, directly via repeaters, using various applications, email, or social media that the amateur radio team utilizes.
“It had been a below normal 2025 severe weather season with only one large-scale severe weather event [in July] across Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts,” said Rob Macedo, KD1CY, ARRL Eastern Massachusetts Section Emergency Coordinator and SKYWARN Coordinator. “That all changed on September 6th.”
Southern New England averages 2 tornadoes per year. The 6 states of New England average 8 tornadoes per year and there had been none in 2025 until Saturday the 6th, when 2/3 of the average yearly total occurred. This outbreak also put southern New England above average for tornadoes in the 2025 season.
All active SKYWARN nets were secured around 6:30 PM local time on Saturday. Thanks to the ARRL for that news.
BBC.com/news reports that a mural is to be created to celebrate a radio communications station in Warwickshire dating back to the 1920s. The Rugby radio station was used for global communications in both peacetime and during the war.
It was used to broadcast time signals and linked the Royal Navy across the British Empire. The site is now being redeveloped and the developers have brought in an artist to create a mosaic made up of thousands of photos from the local community.
The radio station opened in 1926 and by the 1950s it was the biggest such station with nearly sixty masts, but it closed in the early 2000s and a school now stands on part of the site.
The artist, Allan Levy, said his mural would show “what Rugby radio was really about in its heyday when it was transmitting to the rest of the world and we were at the cutting edge of technology”. Mr Levy is still searching for more photos from the local community and aims to have the mural complete in time for the radio station’s 100th anniversary next year.
Thanks to the BBC for that report.
Reporting in theguardian.com/news, Kate Marvel says “Once upon a time, the world was powered by whale. Oil made from whale blubber burns cleanly and well, though it smells strongly of fish. It was, for a while, the perfect fuel. To meet the growing demand, whales were hunted almost to extinction.
“And then we discovered that oil could come from the ground. Lamps once lit by rendered blubber were swiftly changed over to run on what Americans call kerosene and the British call paraffin. Later, those lamps were changed to run on electricity, and instead of burning oil in the lamps themselves, we began to burn it in power plants miles away.
“This is where we find ourselves today. When a fossil fuel is combusted, it releases energy, which boils water, which turns to steam, which drives a turbine, which generates electricity. This is an almost comically inefficient process, requiring immense amounts of material: more than 8 billion tons of coal and 4 trillion cubic metres of fossil gas every year. And given the basic chemistry of combustion, it’s unavoidable that burning all this stuff leads to an immense buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Worse, fossil gas itself is made of methane – shorter lived in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, but more than 80 times more potent while it lasts. Around a quarter of annual greenhouse gas emissions come from using fossil fuels to generate electricity.
“To have a hope of limiting warming, this has to change. The transition to clean energy will be difficult, but not impossible. Some of it is already happening. Renewable energy technologies have become good, reliable and inexpensive. Solar and wind, as well as the batteries needed to compensate for their intermittency, are getting cheaper at an astonishing rate. The price of onshore wind power plummeted 70% in the last decade, while solar costs fell by almost 90%. As a result, renewables are already being deployed at rates forecasters never imagined. If you had told me, even five years ago, how quickly the energy transition would be proceeding, I would not have believed you. It’s more than I ever dared to hope for. Finally, things are beginning to move. But they need to move faster. We know they can. They have before.”
Thank you to the theguardian.com for these first paragraphs from their commentary.
This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR very grateful that I don’t have to boil up some whale blubber to extract oil to light a lamp to be able to see what I’m typing, and reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.