GDACS reports that a strong offshore earthquake of magnitude 7.8 M at a depth of 35 kilometres occurred in the northern Molucca Sea, between the islands of Sulawesi and Halmahera in Indonesia, on 1st April at 22:48 UTC (07:48 local time). The epicentre was located 126 km west-north-west of Ternate City, on Ternate Island, North Maluku Province. A tsunami warning for a wave of about 2 metres was issued, but later retracted.
At least 18 aftershocks were recorded in the area, with magnitudes ranging from 4.4 M to 6.2 M.
USGS PAGER estimates that about 209 000 people were exposed to strong shaking and 2.1 million to moderate shaking. One fatality had been recorded by Friday the 3rd.
In passing, on the 3rd of April, GDACS reported on no less than 60 earthquakes of magnitude 4.5 or greater round the world in the previous 24 hours. The earth was a very unsettled place on Thursday the 2nd!
Riaan, ZS4PR, Divisional Director for HAMNET in the Free State has sent me two reports on the SASOL Marathon of the 28th March, at which Div 4 and Div 6 amateurs assisted. I will keep the second half of the report over to next week, but here is an interesting look at an unexpected complication of such a race. Riaan writes:
”At the 31st SASOL Marathon, the Sasolburg Radio Club’s radio caravan was deployed at the D.P. de Villiers Stadium. In this communication centre, the event communication between the field operators, the ambulance services, and the logistics manager of the Sasolburg Athletics club came together. The set-up of the APRS tracking, Single Frequency Repeater (SFR) and 2m VHF repeater with the GSM SIP phone system in the caravan took place on Friday 27th March.
“By the time that the estimated 3500 athletes with their families/supports had arrived, (from 4am Saturday morning), the cell phone networks (all GSM services) became overwhelmed and started collapsing in the area around the stadium between 5 and 7am. The CPF and the ambulance services using PTT-apps and WhatsApp and Zello could not communicate to their teams. ONLY the RF-APRS tracking on 144.800MHz, the 2m FM repeater on 145.6875MHz and the SFR network (432.525MHz) were able to send signals to the logistics team who were issued the SFR handheld radios. APRS trackers using GSM such as APRSDROID could not report positions.
“The update of the tracking maps in the Club caravan could only happen on the computer that had pre-loaded maps for the race. ALL online/internet (server) software failed to provide live and real time tracking updates for the 2-hour window the mass runners were in the area of the stadium.
“Interestingly, this lack of GSM cell service was observed to move with the main crowd of athletes as they ran through the town. This caused localised GSM outages to the town centre and houses as the crowds moved passed. Amateur radio infrastructure was 100% available where the GSM services failed.”
The race appears to have flowed peacefully, says, Riaan, and all amateurs from the Sasolburg area and Gauteng South are thanked for their help.
Thanks Riaan for that news. Good to know that amateur radio could hold its head up high!
Next week I’ll mention Riaan’s description of the Single Frequency Repeaters in more detail. Fiendishly cunning!
global.chinadaily.com reports that the world’s most powerful cargo drone, built by China North Industries Group Corp, conducted its first flight on Tuesday in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province.
A prototype of the Norinco Luca, also known as the Changying-8, took off at 9:30 am from Zhengzhou Shangjie Airport and remained airborne for about 30 minutes before landing at the same site. According to Norinco UAS, the drone’s developer and a Beijing-based subsidiary of China North Industries Group Corp, engineers checked the model’s flight control, avionics, electronic and power systems and achieved the desired results.
In a news release, it said that the entire flight had been controlled by the aircraft’s intelligent systems and monitored by human controllers.
The Norinco Luca is 17 meters long with a wingspan of 25 meters, and has a takeoff weight of 7 metric tons.
The drone boasts a maximum payload capacity of 3.5 tons, equivalent to the total weight of 50 70kg adults. It can carry over 1,700 cotton coats or 700 disaster-relief tents in a single trip, delivering supplies over long distances. It has a maximum range of more than 3,000 kilometres, which is roughly equivalent to a nonstop direct flight from Beijing to Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
It can take off and land on runways shorter than 500 meters and can use poor condition airports, such as those on plateaus and islands.
The aircraft is equipped with an 18-cubic-meter cargo bay that can be accessed from both the front and rear. According to its designers, the turnaround time can be as little as 15 minutes, greatly improving logistics turnover efficiency.
To ensure absolute operational safety, the Norinco Luca is fitted with two domestically-built turboprop engines and incorporates multiple safety redundancies for key systems, including the flight control, navigation and power supply systems. The aircraft also features smart health monitoring and fault self-diagnosis functions.
For those of you watching video streams from Artemis ll, close to the moon as I transmit this, high-resolution 4K footage is being live-streamed from the surface of the moon thanks to NASA’s laser-based O2O system. The cutting-edge Orion Artemis II Optical Communications system (O2O) will be used to beam 4K moon footage at up to 260 Mbps. We should also be treated to never-before-seen views of “the far side of the Moon, using Nikon digital cameras,” reports The BBC’s Sky at Night magazine.
The O2O system will also be used for fast and efficient transmission and receipt of procedures, pictures, flight plans, and more.
However, the astronauts are also using traditional radio communications to stay in contact with the ground team via NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN). With prior mention of the potential for cloud interference to laser comms, this could be an essential backup. DSN was the key communications tech used by Voyager, the Mars rover, and Artemis I.
Losing sight of the Earth on a planned mission to the far side of the Moon will block both laser and DSN comms, notes the source report. NASA is well aware of this ‘dark window,’ which is estimated to last for 41 minutes.
And, if you aren’t that impressed by the 260 Mbps O2O laser comms terminal’s performance, NASA’s page about this laser technology highlights a Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration it has already completed that achieved 622 Mbps. Moreover, some nearer-Earth space laser comms projects have reached data speeds up to 200 Gbps.
This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR, keeping an eye on Nasa TV and YouTube channel, and reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.