Within a span of seven hours on Friday morning early, the Sun unleashed two powerful X-class solar flares, disrupting high-frequency radio communications across parts of the Pacific, Australia, and East Asia. The bursts, rated X2.4 and X2.5, coming from Active Region 4419 on the sun, are the strongest in over two months and signal heightened solar activity as the current cycle nears its peak

This rapid succession, just seven hours apart, is unusual and points to a highly unstable magnetic configuration. Such events occur when complex sunspot magnetic fields suddenly release stored energy, sending intense radiation across the solar system within minutes of eruption.

NOAA and space weather agencies are tracking the magnetically unstable region responsible for the flares. Clusters of strong flares often precede larger solar events, and if future eruptions are accompanied by coronal mass ejections aimed at Earth, they could trigger geomagnetic storms. Such storms have the potential to disrupt satellites, GPS, and power grids, prompting heightened preparedness among infrastructure operators.

Thanks to MSN.com for this summary.

Brian ZS6YZ, our National HAMNET Director tells me that he and Willem ZS6WIM attended a National Disaster Management Strategic Indaba at Emperors Palace, in Gauteng on Tuesday 14^th April 2026.. The Indaba covered an update on the Review of the Disaster Management System and planned interventions to get Disaster Management back on track.

Here in South Africa our weather patterns are becoming more severe and with devastating impact on communities. Disaster management needs to step up their efforts to reduce the impact on the communities by helping them to be better prepared. One of the ways is to provide early warning of approaching severe weather.

At the meeting, one of our colleagues from the Gauteng Provincial Disaster Management Centre presented an update on the Early Warning System that is being planned, noting that there would be a meeting soon, to continue the quest to find a solution.

An early warning system work in two ways:

Firstly, the weather services needs to know that is happening on the ground. The weather forecasters have access to weather radar systems that can provide them with an understanding of where a storm is and how severe it may be. They also have knowledge from previous storms of what to expect. However, they do not know what is happening on the ground in real time. In other countries such as the US, there is a Skywarn System where radio amateurs are trained to be storm spotters and provide real time information from the ground on the effects of the storm that is being seen on the weather radar.

Secondly, there needs to be a way for the communities who may be severely affected to be warned so that they can take the necessary precautions prior to the storm approaching them.

There are various ways that this can be done, including using the cellular broadcast facilities that are built into the GSM systems to disseminate information. The Weather Services also have Impact Based Warnings WhatsApp groups where forecasters and Disaster practitioners can exchange information. But, what happens if the cellular systems are down? What will plan B or C be?  Are there other technologies that can be deployed to assist with early warning systems? 

The other challenge is that the Government has lost a tremendous amount of knowledge, expertise and skills over the years, and they now look to volunteer organisations to assist them in filling the gaps.

This situation provides opportunities for communications specialists from HAMNET who have a varied knowledge base and who understand the inherent weaknesses of communications systems, to be able to partner with disaster practitioners to explore solutions that do not depend on commercial infrastructure.

On Saturday afternoon 18 April 2026, a small group of HAMNET Gauteng members met at the equipment container at the Brakpan airfield to discuss the use of technology in emergency communications. Brian delivered the presentation “Using Technology to provide effective HAMNET emergency communications” that was first presented at the 2026 National Technical Symposium. A discussion then took place on the importance of not only focussing on amateur radio digital modes, but on all technologies that could be used to pass information in the event of an emergency or disaster, be it wireless, microwave link, or even satellite services like Starlink. It is important that the best available technology be used, backed up by layers of alternate solutions that could be deployed should the primary solution fail or not be available.

Thank you for this summary of the communications associated with weather and the way forward, Brian.

wbng.com reports that a historic radio tower in Binghamton was used to connect with others around the world yesterday to commemorate the birthday of one of the inventors of radio.

Happening on Saturday, April 25, members of the Binghamton Amateur Radio Association (BARA) talked to amateur radio operators around the world using the historic Marconi Tower at 45 Lewis St.

The event commemorates the birth of Guglielmo Marconi, one of the inventors of radio, and is held annually on the Saturday closest to his actual birthday.

BARA operated using the tower from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. local time, reaching out to stations worldwide that were operating at other historic sites related to Marconi’s life and career. This event has been happening in Broome County annually since 2017.

Binghamton’s Marconi Tower is the last of four towers, two built in Binghamton and two in Scranton, that were put up by Marconi in 1913 as part of a pioneering experiment that first demonstrated radio-communication with a fast-moving vehicle, specifically a train traveling between Scranton and Binghamton.

This is a final reminder now to you all to appoint a proxy for the Annual General Meeting taking place next week Saturday the 2^nd May. Please note that the SARL website will be offline on Wednesday the 29^th for scheduled maintenance, so, if you want to download that proxy form, do it today! Please send it back to the secretary by midnight on Wednesday. And note the SARL office will be closed all of the coming workdays this week, so you cannot direct enquiries to Admin before the AGM. Please be proactive.

This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR, wishing the attendees a useful AGM and a pleasant banquet next Saturday, and reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

By 16 April at 03:00 UTC, Tropical Cyclone SINLAKU’s centre was located over the ocean approximately 144 km west of Alamagan Island, with maximum sustained winds of 185 km/h.

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a total of 1 080 people remain evacuated in 16 evacuation centres, 320 in the Northern Mariana Islands and 760 in Guam. Additionally, FEMA and media report power and water outages, particularly on Guam, Saipan, Rota and Tinian.

Over the next 48 hours, heavy to very heavy rainfall, strong winds and storm surges are forecast for most of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. A Typhoon Warning remains in effect for Rota, Tinian, Saipan, Alamagan, Pagan and Agrihan islands.

The US Coast Guard News advised mariners of outages in VHF radio communications coverage in the vicinity of Guam, Rota, Saipan and surrounding areas in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands on Wednesday.

Mariners should anticipate reduced reception and transmission capabilities that may potentially impact distress and safety communications.

Remote fixed facility tower outages have impacted coverage around Guam, Rota, and Saipan, extending from coastal areas to 20 nautical miles offshore.

Joint Rescue Coordination Center Honolulu watch-standers issued a safety marine information broadcast and SafetyNET broadcast informing mariners of outages.

Meanwhile, Malaysia, Indonesia, Panama and Haiti are also all experiencing severe weather and flooding.

And you can take it from me that winter officially started on Friday the 17^th in the Western Cape. A powerful cold front arrived in the early morning, with lots of rain, with a large amount of cold Antarctic air behind it, resulting in snow being experienced in the Matroosberg mountains, and, according to snowreport.co.za, forecast for the peaks of Franschoek, Paarl, Worcester, De Doorns, Montagu, Ceres, Tulbagh, the Koue Bokkeveld and the Cedarberg, as well as the Swartberg mountains, for the weekend. Time for the thermal underwear indeed!

Meanwhile, the measles epidemic in children in Bangladesh is spreading, with 19161 cases hospitalized and 166 deaths reported. 22 million doses of vaccine are being distributed, and 943000 children under the age of 5 have been immunized so far. Vaccinate your children, people!

For those of you still suffering from the heat trapped inside your closed car parked somewhere, you’ll be excited to hear that a transparent radiative cooling film technology that dissipates heat directly to the outside without consuming electricity has been developed to reduce vehicle overheating during summer. The technology was validated through real-vehicle experiments conducted under diverse conditions—including different countries, seasons, and both parking and driving scenarios—and demonstrated the ability to lower cabin temperatures by up to 6.1°C and reduce cooling energy consumption by more than 20%.

The website phys.org says that Seoul National University College of Engineering announced that a research team has designed and fabricated a large-area Scalable Transparent Radiative Cooling (STRC) film applicable to vehicle windows. Through real-vehicle evaluations conducted under various climatic and driving conditions, the team demonstrated both energy-saving and carbon reduction effects.

This research was published online on February 4 in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

Vehicles exposed to solar radiation in summer experience rapid increases in cabin temperature, resulting in substantial cooling energy consumption. Conventional automotive Low-E coatings and tinting films can partially block incoming solar radiation but fail to dissipate effectively heat already accumulated inside the vehicle, thereby limiting their cooling performance.

Radiative cooling technology, which has attracted attention as an alternative, simultaneously blocks incoming solar energy and emits internal heat to the outside, enabling passive cooling without electricity. However, most previously developed radiative cooling materials are opaque, making them unsuitable for application to vehicle windows, which are the primary entry points for heat.

To overcome this limitation, the research team developed a large-area transparent radiative cooling film with a multilayer structure that maintains over 70% visible light transmittance, reflects near-infrared solar radiation, and emits heat from the vehicle interior in the mid-infrared range. This film suppresses temperature rise inside the vehicle without consuming electrical energy and reduces the time required to reach thermal comfort, thereby minimizing energy consumption in electric vehicles.

Real-vehicle experiments conducted across different climatic regions—including Korea, the United States, and Pakistan—and under varying conditions such as summer and winter, as well as parking and driving scenarios, confirmed that vehicles equipped with the STRC film consistently maintained lower cabin temperatures under all conditions.

And in bad news for the vapers of the world, phys.org also reports that a study published in Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry by University of Technology Sydney (UTS) researchers showed that even short-term vaping at exposure levels below typical daily human use resulted in measurable accumulation of toxic metals in lung tissue—including lead, copper and nickel.

Lead researcher Dr. Dayanne Bordin, a lecturer in analytical chemistry, said the pre-clinical study provides the first evidence that e-cigarette aerosols include metal-containing (organometallic) species, including those associated with tin and mercury—forms that are often more bioavailable and biologically reactive than inorganic metals.

“From a risk perspective, the findings reveal under-recognized hazards associated with vaping,” she said.

“Metal emissions and their biological effects are rarely incorporated into current safety assessments or public understanding. Unlike cigarettes, which are relatively consistent products, e-cigarettes and devices are often manufactured with poor quality control involving materials and components with unknown toxicological relevance.

“The metal profiles observed are consistent with emissions from heating coils and electrical components, identifying the device itself as a critical source of exposure and highlighting important gaps in how vaping risks are evaluated.”

Dr. Bordin explains this is important because many people believe vaping carries less risk than conventional cigarettes. This perceived reduction in harm, along with misleading marketing campaigns, has contributed to the rapid uptake of e-cigarettes globally, particularly among younger demographics. In Australia, for example, e-cigarette use among young adults increased from 5.3% in 2019 to over 21% in 2023, with a similar rise in adolescents.

“Our findings challenge the assumption that e-cigarettes are safer and show how critical it is to review current vaping regulations, which should be expanded to include device-derived emissions, not just the e-liquid composition,” she said.

“Vaping can deliver toxic metals directly into the lungs, even after short-term use. This information is important for anyone considering vaping, especially young people, because these metal exposures are largely invisible and rarely discussed.”

Thank you to phys.org for this alarming report.

I hope I don’t need to remind you that increased levels of heavy metals in the body and the brain are associated with an increased risk, at an earlier age, of dementia.

This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR, having given up smoking in 1972, and thankfully never having tried vaping ever, and reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.