Under the bad weather section, I can report that heavy rainfall, strong winds, storm surges and very low temperatures have been affecting the United Kingdom (mainly western and south-western England, Scotland and Northern Ireland) over the last few days, causing several severe weather-related incidents, floods and coastal floods that have resulted in casualties and damage. The severe weather was caused firstly by the storm INGRID and after that by the following storm CHANDRA, both officially named by the UK Met Office.
And in the USA, very heavy snowfall, very low temperatures and strong winds have been affecting north-eastern and eastern USA (from New England southward to the Mid-Atlantic States) and southern USA over the last few days, causing several severe weather-related incidents resulting in casualties and damage. Media report, as of 27 January, 31 fatalities and 34 injured people, and 1,490 evacuated people in 141 shelters.
Severe weather continues in Mozambique and Brian ZS6ZY, leader of the USAR communications team reports that he and Johan ZS6DMX left for Mozambique with our Emergency Response Team to aid in rescue activities, but, owing to complicated bureaucratic issues, he and Johan were held back and diverted to Mpumalanga and Limpopo areas of our country, which are in almost as much peril from heavy rain as Mozambique is.
GDACS has been reporting on a Tropical Cyclone named FYTIA, which formed over the northern Mozambique Channel on 29th January in the afternoon, and started moving from west to east toward Madagascar as a tropical storm. On 30th January, it was just offshore of the town of Vilamasta, with maximum wind speeds of 116km/h. It was expected to make landfall over Vilamasta late on Friday, with maximum sustained wind speeds of up to 179km/h, moving slowly across the “waist” of Madagascar on Saturday as a tropical storm.
A RED alert for the storm was issued by GDACS on Friday afternoon, warning that 120000 people would be in the path of the winds of at least 120km/h, and that the storm would have a high humanitarian impact on the population of central Madagascar.
As a result of my request to the divisional directors to supply me with news I can use here, Keith Lowes ZS5WFD of HAMNET KZN has told me about a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) that needed locating after it had been stolen in KZN. It was first traced to Wiggins/Cato Manor, but then switched off.
When it came back on again the next day, Keith deployed himself, together with Metro Police Search and Rescue. Using his Airband receiver, and the AMSAT-SA handheld Yagi, he searched unsuccessfully for the beacon, which had been transmitting intermittently. Help from Justin ZS5JW, Jitesh ZS5JM, Norman ZS5JY, Brian ZS5BR, and Ben ZS5BN was unsuccessful in triangulating the low power signal well enough to get a bearing.
By 13H00, the beacon signal had disappeared, and the ARCC Operations Chief Gregory Critchley stood the team down.
Keith says: “Although we were not able to recover the unit, it was a good exercise and an opportunity to strengthen our working relationship with the Metro Police Search & Rescue Unit.” Of course, the HAMNET group was also able to test and assess their equipment and direction finding capabilities.
It can be extremely difficult to pinpoint a signal like this when it is emanating from suburbs, because of all kinds of signal reflections off buildings and foliage, which confuses your direction finding immensely. Thanks Keith, for the report.
Gideon ZS4GJA, HAMNET Regional Director for HAMNET Vaal has sent me a report of last Sunday’s FastOne Cycle Race. He writes that HAMNET Gauteng, Vaal and Free State took part in a joint venture to provide communications for the race which was held on 25 January in Meyerton and surroundings. It consisted of a cycle race over 106 km and a shorter route of 62 km, organized by the Rotary Club of Vanderbijlpark to raise funds for their projects throughout the year. This year was the 20th race and about 2000 cyclists took part. The weather was perfect for cycling.
HAMNET actually started with preparations for this event last year. Boxes with a dual band radio, tracking device and a battery were built by HAMNET Gauteng. These made the installation process a breeze, where in the past it took a few hours to install all the trackers and radios into the ambulances and sweep vehicles. This year it was done in less than an hour and a half. HAMNET also had to provide lead vehicles and back markers for both distances due to the shortage of traffic officials.
HAMNET set up a JOC with representatives of the Rotary, Ambulances, Road Rangers and the security company to coordinate the race and make sure that all injuries were attended to and bicycles were picked up. There was a radio amateur at each water point to make sure there were communications with the JOC.
A spinoff from the race is that HAMNET will have to make sure that all the Road Rangers motorcycles have trackers in future in order for their coordinator to know where they are on the route due to problems they experienced with cell phones.
This event was once again proof that HAMNET does have a place in the communications world and that different HAMNET regions can co-operate without any problems.
Thank you, Gideon.
Next Saturday the 7th February sees the riding of the well-known 99er Cycle Tour out of Durbanville sportsgrounds in the Western Cape. This is a selection of 4 cycle races, three of which are on roads, and the fourth of which is a combined tar, gravel and off-road race for the mountain bikers.
The long 95km race, the 76km medium race and the short 45km route have different start times, as does the off-road race, but they all end at the combined finish in the streets of Durbanville, with a final cut-off at 12h30.
HAMNET Western Cape is fully involved, with nine mobile rovers patrolling various parts of the routes, reporting on various cut-offs, and monitoring their sections for accidents or riders who wish to bale out. There will be another four radio stations, stationary on each end of two narrow bridges on the long route. A station at the end of each bridge receiving oncoming cyclists will notify his partner on the far side, so that the traffic police can stop cars which might otherwise meet the riders on the narrow bridge.
Michael ZS1MJT HAMNET Western Cape Regional Director, and Sybrand, ZS1L, his Deputy, will use the HAMNET Communications trailer as our JOC, parked next to the Medical JOC at the race start and finish.
There will be two temporary APRS digipeaters installed to cover the race terrain, and mobile rovers will use their own trackers, while important race marshals, and the back markers of all four routes will use our HAMNET All-In-One trackers to be followed and identified on the route. Our APRS tracking will also be visible to the medical team in their JOC, to aid them in the identification of trouble spots.
A report on this race should be available during next week’s bulletin.
This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR, happy to have some real communications news to bring you, and reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.