It is with a sinking feeling that I must report that the days in the Southern Hemisphere start getting shorter from today. Woe is me – I prefer the warm weather and long sunsets.
I suppose I shouldn’t complain. Between Wednesday and Friday this week, GDACS reported flooding in Bolivia, DRC, Malaysia, Palestine, Morocco, the Northwest USA, Spain and Brazil, as well as heavy snowfall in Canada, forest fires in Chile, landslides in Vietnam, bushfires in Australia and continued violence and forced displacements in Mozambique.
eNCA reports that KwaZulu-Natal disaster management authorities are on high alert amid yet another weather warning. The South African Weather Service has issued a Level 5 and a Level 2 warning.
The Level 5 warning affects the Western, Midlands, and Northern parts of the province and the Level 2 warning affects coastal areas.
There’s a high probability of flooding, mudslides, rock-falls and soil erosion.
Level 2 warnings also affect Gauteng, the North West, Free State, Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape.
Reporting from the Western Cape, I am lucky to be free of these dangers.
Keith Lowes ZS5WFD of HAMNET KZN has sent me a report of the Upper Highway Trail Marathon held on 6th December 2025. He writes:
“HAMNET-KZN deployed 7 members who once again partnered with S.T.A.R.T Rescue (Specialised Tactical Accident Rescue Team) and Redline Response Ambulance to assist with communications for this popular annual event.
“A Joint Operations Centre (JOC) was established at the beautiful Start and Finish venue of Camp Orchards in Hillcrest which was manned by Provincial Director Keith Lowes ZS5WFD for HAMNET and Brad Cool for the S.T.A.R.T Rescue team members. HAMNET made use of the Highway Amateur Radio Club’s 145.7625 repeater situated in Kloof and 145.550 Simplex which gave us excellent coverage of the whole route. The route took runners through 7 Nature Conservancies, 6 river eco-systems, 3 scenic waterfalls and some of the most beautiful trails in the area.
“142 runners started the 42Km race at 05H30 with 6 Water Points, whilst 437 runners started the 21Km event at 06H00 with 3 Water Points on route. The last runner crossed the finish line at 15H15.
“Trail conditions were wet and slippery with cloudy/overcast and light rain persisting for the duration of the event.
“I am pleased to report that no serious medical emergencies were experienced apart from the usual cuts/grazes and sprained ankles. If you didn’t bleed, you weren’t trying hard enough!!!! An ambulance was dispatched at 09H20 to Watsonia Place to assist a patient who was not part of the Trail Event.
“Recently acquired SARL HAMNET EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS tear-drop banners drew the public’s attention to our activities at strategic points along the route.
“This was our final sporting event for the year. I wish to extend my sincere thanks to my HAMNET KZN team for their dedication and loyal support during the year. You may take a well-earned break with your families but please remain vigilant and be available should a call for HAMNET’S assistance be received during the festive period.”
Thank you, Keith, for the report, and for your never-failing contribution to HAMNET in KZN.
Now, if you think we have problems driving our vehicles on the roads, spare a thought for the folks who have to manoeuvre satellites out of each other’s way. With reference to solar flares and geomagnetic storms that influence GPS positioning, Jonathan O’Callaghan, writing in newscientist.com, says that satellites in orbit would begin to collide in a matter of days if they lost maneuverability during a solar storm or other outage
A collision would occur in just 2.8 days if all satellites lost their ability to dodge each other, highlighting how crowded Earth’s orbit is becoming.
In the past seven years, the number of satellites has more than tripled from 4000 to nearly 14,000. The main cause of this growth has been SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, which now numbers more than 9000 satellites in low Earth orbit between 340 and 550 kilometres above Earth.
This large increase means satellites must constantly dodge out of the way of each other, known as a collision avoidance manoeuvre, to prevent crashes that would generate thousands of pieces of metal and potentially render parts of Earth’s orbit unusable.
From 1 December 2024 to 31 May 2025, SpaceX alone performed 144,404 collision avoidance manoeuvres, equivalent to one every 1.8 minutes across its constellation, according to a report by the company. Only one collision between satellites in orbit has ever occurred. In 2009, an active satellite run by Iridium Communications hit a defunct Russian Kosmos satellite. Hundreds of pieces of debris from the event still orbit Earth.
Sarah Thiele at Princeton University and her colleagues used public positional data of satellites to model how their increased number has affected the collision risk. They came up with a new metric, called the Collision Realization And Significant Harm (CRASH) Clock to quantify the risk. The name invites comparisons with the infamous Doomsday Clock that charts humanity’s threat of nuclear war. “We definitely talked about that a lot,” says Samantha Lawler at the University of Regina in Canada, another member of the team.
Thanks to newscientist.com for that cheerful news.
It remains now only for me to wish all of my readers and listeners a very happy festive season, celebrating appropriately, and responsibly, looking after your loved ones, and doing for them that which you would like being done for you.
I’d like to greet Hans van den Groenendaal, ZS6AKV, who has been steering this ARToday ship for many years, and thank him for putting together a programme of interesting hobby stuff so faithfully every week, and also the Councilors and Admin of the SARL, and thank them for all they do to keep our hobby safe and progressive. I think we, as the benefitting radio amateurs, don’t appreciate enough the work that goes on behind the scenes to keep the wheels rolling.
This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR, reporting from sunny Cape Town, for HAMNET in South Africa.