GDACS reported on Friday a GREEN notification for Tropical Cyclone JANGMI, active in the North West Pacific, with maximum wind speeds of up to 150km/h, threatening up to 8 million people in Japan with wind speeds of at least 120km/h. It is not over the land yet, but is expected to track parallel to Japan’s South Island at its most damaging stage.

Techxplore.com says that a popular sodium-ion battery designed by the company HINA and used in cars and large-scale energy storage systems in China matches performance parameters and production quality of Tesla’s lithium-ion batteries, according to new research published in Cell Reports Physical Science.

Once the Hina battery is tweaked to charge more effectively at low temperatures and function better at high energy densities, it could provide a cost-effective alternative for future electric vehicle batteries that depend on sodium—an abundant and easily sourced material—instead of lithium.

“The combination of good uniformity, high power capability, and strong low-temperature performance makes these cells attractive for stationary storage, grid services, and shorter-range or commercial vehicles where potential lower cost and resource availability matter more than maximum driving range,” says Moritz Schütte, a battery researcher at RWTH Aachen University in Germany.

To assess how Hina batteries compare to more advanced Tesla batteries, Schütte’s team used a non-destructive technique called impedance spectroscopy to measure the uniformity of 120 sodium-ion battery cells.

Next, to map out the power and energy performances of individual cells under real-life conditions, the team tested the batteries at varying currents and at temperatures from −20 °C to +45 °C. They also used X-rays to see the battery’s internal structure, then opened up the cells to measure their electrode dimensions, compositions, and microstructures.

They found that the battery uses a tab-less double-aluminum current collector design that reduces resistance and ensures a uniform temperature distribution—and also mirrors the current design of Tesla batteries.

“We were positively surprised by how uniform the cells are,” says Schütte.

However, the sodium-ion battery has some limitations when it comes to energy density and charging at low temperatures. “The high-power performance was better than one might expect from an early commercial sodium-ion product,” says Schütte.

“However, for applications that require frequent charging at low ambient temperatures, appropriate thermal management or operating strategies will be important because low-temperature charging remains a clear weakness.”

Since sodium is much more abundant and widely available than lithium, using it for batteries could cut raw material costs for manufacturers and reduce long-term supply chain risks. Sodium-ion batteries also perform well under load at low temperatures, making them an appealing option for both stationary power storage and mobile applications in cold climates.

Thank you to techxplore.com for these notes.

Here’s something that I know has been keeping you folk awake at night for decades. How pigeons fly hundreds of kilometers and still find their way home has long fascinated people. Now, researchers say a surprising answer may be hidden, not in the brain or eyes of birds, but in the liver.

A study published in Science suggests that special cells in the liver of pigeons can sense Earth’s magnetic field, giving the birds an internal compass.

The special cells, known as “macrophages“, are immune cells that break down old red blood cells. As part of this process, they accumulate iron, giving them quantum properties that may allow them to respond to magnetic fields. Without these cells intact, pigeons could not navigate home, the study shows.

“What looks like a ‘gut feeling’ in bird navigation may actually have a physical basis,” adds Prof. Martin Wikelski, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and a co-senior author of the study.

For decades, scientists have known that migratory birds and homing pigeons rely in part on Earth’s magnetic field to navigate. But exactly how they detect it remains one of biology’s unsolved mysteries.

Competing theories have suggested that birds might “see” magnetic fields through light-sensitive molecules in the eye, or detect them using tiny magnetic particles in the beak. None has come up with convincing experimental support. The new study proposes a different mechanism for magnetic sensing, supported by a combination of lab tests and behavioral experiments.

To identify where magnetic cells are found in pigeons, the researchers used techniques known as “vibrating sample magnetometry” and “magnetic cell separation” to screen organs thought to be involved in magnetic sensing, including the eyes, beak, and brain. They also examined the liver and spleen.

“We had some clues that the liver and spleen have magnetic properties, because they break down red blood cells and so store much iron in the body,” says first author Dr. Clivia Lisowski, from the University of Bonn and the University Hospital Bonn, who led the immunological work.

The results supported that idea. Of all the tissues examined, the liver showed the highest concentration of iron.

“Iron is crystallized in oxide nanoparticles, making the cells superparamagnetic and reactive to magnetic fields. We found by far the strongest magnetic response in liver tissue,” adds Prof. Ulf Wiedwald, from the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Further analysis identified macrophages in the liver as the cells responsible. To test if liver macrophages played a role in navigation, the ornithological team conducted experiments on pigeons that were trained to return from distances over twenty kilometers back to their aviary at the MPI-AB in Konstanz, Germany.

After the macrophages were removed, pigeons lost their sense of direction on overcast days when the sun was obscured. When the sun was visible, however, the pigeons successfully navigated home, likely using solar cues. Together, these results illustrate the mechanism behind how birds use magnetic sensing, in addition to the sun’s orientation, for navigation.

With evidence that these cells influence navigation, the researchers then looked for how signals from the liver might be relayed. Electron microscopy showed that the iron-rich macrophages sit close to nerve fibers, suggesting a pathway for magnetic information to reach the brain.

Lisowski says, “These findings provide the first concrete evidence of how Earth’s magnetic field can be perceived within the body and passed on to the brain to guide movement.”

Thanks to Phys.org for this interesting study.

I don’t know about you fellows, but I’m wondering who will be the first radio amateur to bounce signals off homing pigeons livers as they fly home during a race, thereby demonstrating the first evidence of “pigeon-scatter”, after “meteor-scatter” and “aeroplane-scatter!

This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR, wondering if I can propagate a better signal, by bouncing it off all the scrap metal in my garden shed, and reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

The Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) newsletter of 20^th May reports that more than 100 Southern California hams mobilized to support public safety and medical functions during an Earthquake Full Scale Exercise (FSE) and Medical Response and Surge Exercise (MRSE) on 15^th April, in San Diego County, California, the fifth-most populated county in the United States.

Hams deployed to over 40 locations to provide communications support to hospitals, law enforcement, military bases, city and county emergency operations centres (EOCs), tribal communities, and evacuation shelters for the magnitude 6.9 earthquake exercise scenario. Damage was simulated along the busy north-south Interstate 5 corridor, in downtown San Diego, and in northern Mexico, knocking out key bridges, other infrastructure, and the San Diego International Airport. The exercise was planned by the California and San Diego County Offices of Emergency Services (OES).

Amateur radio organizations participating included the San Diego Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), San Diego Sheriff’s Office Auxiliary Communications Service (ACS), American Red Cross Disaster Support Team (DST), and Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) groups such as the Poway Auxiliary Communication Team (PACT).

Radio amateurs were stretched thin to cover 40 locations, from hospital trauma centers in beach cities along the populated coast to rural mountain towns in the backcountry. With simultaneous activation of several amateur radio organizations, hams with membership in more than one group had to decide which organization to support, resulting in less-than-full staffing at some locations. Consequently, hams had to step up to fill roles that were vacant due to these challenges.

In the same newsletter, I read that an ARRL Mississippi Section ARES Simulated Emergency Test (SET), code-named “Operation Undead,” took place on Saturday, March 14, running for twelve hours from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM. The scenario was a severe disruption of commercial communications infrastructure coupled with a localized biological threat—a novel pathogen outbreak mimicking an “undead” scenario requiring specialized public health coordination for quarantine and resource allocation.

The primary mission for Mississippi ARES was to coordinate amateur radio operators supporting overflow and emergency communications for public safety, public service, and state and local government entities, focusing specifically on the public health sector. ARES members were instructed to deploy from home stations, mobile units, and portable setups, often strategically positioned at emergency operations centers (EOCs) and public health agency locations.

The purpose of the drill was to evaluate emergency preparedness strengths and weaknesses, and demonstrate ARES capabilities to served agencies and the public. After-action summaries will show operational insights and provide guidance for future preparation efforts. All participants have been requested to submit online reports post-event, including Emergency Coordinator and Net Manager reports, as well as narrative After-Action Reports (AARs). Additionally, preparations for the 2026 SET included Mikah Crochet, K5WZL, EC for Pearl River County, coordinating with Mississippi State Guard communications assets, confirming their active participation and necessitating further meetings to ensure coordination and interoperability.

Thanks to the ARES newsletter for both these reports.

At the Cape Town Amateur Radio Centre monthly meeting yesterday afternoon, and on behalf of the President of the SARL, awards were handed out as announced at the AGM on 2^nd May. The four recipients of the HAMNET Shield for their services to HAMNET communications in the Western Cape (Danie, ZS1OSS, Shawn ZS1LED, Ian ZS1BR and Michael ZS1MJT) were gratefully thanked for their services to HAMNET in the Peninsula. Christo ZS1CBY, David ZS1GA and Neil ZR1ABO had previously received Jack Twine awards at the AGM, for their services to HAMNET in the Winelands area, with particular reference to the establishment of a linked system of Raspberry PI APRS digipeaters, which have increased the range of visible moving vehicles and beacons to as far as Touws River on the N1. With one more digipeater still to be installed at Langeberg, the system should cover the far side of the Hottentots Holland Mountains from Worcester down to Swellendam and along the N2. These digipeaters are linked to the Peninsula APRS system over the mountains by a very high digipeater running on solar power only on the very top of du Toit’s Kloof, which was installed by helicopter before Pierre ZS1HF’s key went silent. This ZS0DZ digipeater is currently working flawlessly and I hope I haven’t cast a spell on it by saying so!

Hamvention has come and gone. Of course, the American Press is full of aspects of the exhibits, the forums, and the markets. We, unluckily, won’t get much exposure to the forums, which are usually the most valuable part of the convention. And, as far as I can see, the new products by the big manufacturers are few and far between. It looks to me like a new repeater from YAESU, a new tunable vertical telescopic HF antenna from ELECRAFT, a new antenna tuner from ICOM, and an update to the dualband FM and D-star radio also by ICOM. It may take a while for these items to appear on the market, so don’t hold your breath

Belganewsagency.eu says that The European Space Agency (ESA) is set to launch the SMILE mission on Tuesday the 26th, in collaboration with China, to study the Sun’s influence on Earth. Belgium is making a significant contribution to the mission, the Belgian Science Policy Office (Belspo) announced.

What’s with a GPS that suddenly stops working, radio communications that cut out, or blocked electricity grids? The potential source of disruption in all these scenarios is the phenomenon of the solar wind. The Sun emits charged particles that can collide with the Earth’s magnetic field, thereby disrupting technology on Earth and in space. This can, for example, put astronauts in serious danger.

The SMILE mission aims precisely to map this phenomenon better. “Thanks to the new data collected by the satellite, scientists will be able to analyze when and why so-called space weather causes problems,” stated Belspo in a press release. In this way, scientists will in the future be able to predict where disruptions will occur.

Belgium plays a role in both the satellite’s instruments and the research. The Liège Space Centre, for example, contributed to the development of SMILE’s ultraviolet instrument. The University of Liège will help examine the data from that instrument. The Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy is also a co-investigator, but specifically focusing on the properties of the solar wind.

The SMILE (Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) will launch on Tuesday from French Guiana, heading for an orbit around the Earth for at least three years.

This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

I wasn’t joking when I mentioned the possibility of storms hitting the Western Cape in last Sunday’s report. I’m sure by now you are all aware of the National State of Disaster announced by the Government as a result of storms and flooding in six provinces. The Western Cape was one of them.

Large swathes of the Winelands, the Swartland, and the Peninsula itself were flooded with rainfall in the hundreds of millimetres. Almost a week later, farms, small towns, roads, bridges, pleasure resorts and all low-lying living areas are still under water, impassable, or washed away.

Towns like Worcester, Ceres, and Robertson were isolated. A problem at Ceres raised concern, when Emergency Medical Services were unable to provide their ambulance services, or make contact with any of their outlying clinics, because all cell-phone and landline communications were cut off.

HAMNET Western Cape was approached for help in Ceres, to provide comms back to Provincial Emergency Medical Services at Tygerberg, in case of serious illness or accident amongst inhabitants, as well as with dispatch and control of their ambulances. Michael ZS1MJT, our Regional HAMNET Director, undertook to drive to Ceres in his camper van, suitably equipped with communications and antennas, and drove a very circuitous route of 310km, via Wellington and Gouda, then almost to Touws River on the N1, to be able to turn North, and then head towards the Tankwa Karoo, before doubling back to use the only open route into Ceres, on Wednesday. (Interestingly, the Western Cape’s APRS digipeaters tracked him for the entire distance.)

The Disaster Risk Manager in Ceres made good use of his capabilities and he was able to assist with radio comms amongst official vehicles and ambulances there. Getting back to the Peninsula via HF radio was a bigger problem however, but luckily, he had just finished building our first QO-100 satellite dish and radio the weekend before, and used it to good effect, to transmit to a geostationary satellite 36000 km above the equator over DRC, and back to similarly equipped stations in Cape Town, to be able to convey messages to Provincial EMS. The satellite communication was rock steady, and unaffected by the glancing blow to the earth of a coronal mass ejection off the sun, after an M class 5.7 Solar Flare, which raised the noise floor on HF to almost unusable levels via ordinary HF propagation.

Michael was able, at night, to use 80m HF using an end-fed long wire, and made contact with several HAMNET members in Cape Town, who in turn contacted EMS at Tygerberg. Thank you to all those who managed to keep skeds with Michael and relay news.

By Friday, communications between ambulances and their base in Ceres were returning to normal, and Michael arrived back on Friday evening, having driven about 700 km, to reach a town just 135km away, if the usual roads had been passable!

Meanwhile, most of the Winelands towns have been heavily flooded, and are still without fresh water supplies, because pumping stations are themselves underwater and out of action. And in the greater flood area, 10 deaths were reported, and over 83000 people living in 21500 dwellings were affected or displaced by the floods.

The silver lining to the grey cloud that was the storm, was the rain in the catchment areas of the Western Cape dams, whose levels have already risen in a week by about 20% as I write this, with more water in the rivers still to reach the dams. If this is the way our winter rainfall season starts, all our dams should be at 100% by the end of it.

Brian, ZS6YZ, our HAMNET National Director has sent me a very long and comprehensive write-up from the ITU about what happens when digital systems fail. I have tried to reduce the executive summary for you a bit. It says:

“What if, tomorrow, mobile phones and the internet stopped working, payments failed, hospitals lost patient data, and emergency alerts never arrived? What may sound like science fiction could become reality. A large-scale, escalating failure of critical digital systems, a ‘digital pandemic’, is a plausible scenario that current management frameworks are not yet designed to address.

“A solar storm of the magnitude that narrowly missed Earth in 2012 could have knocked out power grids and communications across entire continents. Growing space debris already threatens to push low-Earth orbit toward failure, jeopardizing satellite navigation, financial networks, and weather forecasting all at once. Extreme weather, which is growing more violent with climate change, has already shown its capacity to sever digital infrastructure entirely, turning disasters into humanitarian crises.

“This report shows that digital disruptions rarely remain isolated events. They cascade. What begins with a local failure can rapidly spread across sectors and borders. In fact, up to 89% of digital disruptions from natural hazards are caused by secondary spillover effects rather than from the initial damage. The number of people ultimately affected can be up to ten times higher than those initially exposed to the initial event. Digital risks often remain invisible until they reach a critical threshold. Systems simply stop working while our physical world is seemingly unaltered. This may delay crisis response when action matters the most.

“Meanwhile, our ability to cope without digital systems has eroded. Across sectors, analogue skills and fallback options have disappeared or are no longer tested. When systems fail at scale, manual alternatives often cannot replace them. However, the severity of this challenge varies significantly across contexts: countries with more limited infrastructure redundancy, including small island developing states and least developed countries, face distinct and in some cases more acute vulnerabilities.

“Finally, a critical gap persists in how risks are understood. Cyber threats attract significant attention, but non-intentional disruptions of material infrastructure follow different dynamics. The knowledge exists, but we are not paying sufficient attention. And even when we do, we lack the necessary frameworks, standards, and coordination capacities needed to turn that knowledge into preparedness.

“Addressing these risks requires action across six priorities, identified through a co-creation process with senior expert practitioners spanning international organizations, national authorities, academic institutions, and the private sector:

1. Building the knowledge base to identify critical risks, model chain reactions, and map cross-sector dependencies;

2. Updating risk management frameworks to recognize non-intentional digital disruptions as a core risk;

3. Strengthening international standards for resilience, encouraging cooperation for analogue fallback capacity, and joint scenario planning;

4. Ramping up proactive coordination on the most acute risk vectors; enhancing societal capacity to absorb and recover from digital disruptions;

5. Building the trust, and shared situational awareness; and

6. Global collaboration needed to translate early warnings into collective action.

The entire document is available on the ITU website and is named “s-rep-wtisd-2026-pdf-e.pdf”

This weekend sees the Dayton Hamvention taking place in Xenia, Ohio, with about 35000 visitors and exhibitors expected to attend. All the major manufacturers will have stalls there, as well as the ARRL and the RSGB societies. There will have been many seminars held over the three days, and manufacturers are expected to showcase their new devices for amateurs to drool over. I hope to bring you news of new developments in the next week or so.

This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

A cut-off low pressure cell has been hovering over the south-eastern Cape for about a week now, and the extreme rain conditions, to which the Eastern Cape is not used, struck in midweek. You have probably all noted the heavy rainfall round about Knysna and inland of it, since midweek.

48-hour rainfall figures up to 8am Thursday morning revealed 300 mm in Joubertina, 280 mm near Knysna, 216 in George, 110 in Uitenhage and 106 in Port Elizabeth. And there has been more, and there will continue to be more in to the middle of this week.

The Kouga, Groendal, Loerie, Impofu and Churchill dams all rose from an average for all 5 dams of 36.3% full before the rains, to 117% full by Friday the 8^th. The Kromme river became a raging torrent and people along the banks were encouraged and then ordered to evacuate to high ground to prevent disaster.

two men spent a very cold 2 days in an abandoned shed above the river when Meiringspoort’s N12 mountain pass was washed away. They were eventually rescued by helicopter.

Mayor Hattingh Bornman, of the Kouga Local Municipality has posted many reports on FaceBook of areas being flooded or washed away, low-lying communities being saturated as rivers overflowed their banks, and continuing icy rain.

The NSRI was activated in Oyster Bay to rescue multiple people and animals trapped at Kingsway Resort on the Gamtoos river. NSRI in Gqeberha, Jefferys Bay, St Francis Bay and Oyster Bay were all activated,, together with SAPS and other rescue organisations. Rescue swimmers, CROCS (small floating canoes) police divers. EMS rescue squads and lots of Good Samaritans were all roped in.

In the end 49 people were rescued aged from 5 to 80 years old, and an undetermined number of animals as well

Andrew Gray ZS2G, of HAMNET Eastern Cape reports that 2000 flood affected victims in Nelson Mandela Bay area were moved to shelters, and will need donations of food and blankets to keep them going.

And the Western Cape is threatened with heavy and disruptive rainfall starting this morning early, affecting the Winelands and the Overberg regions as well, and resulting in about 140mm of rain being predicted by Tuesday. This is very good news for our dams which have been showing signs of impending emptiness over the hot summer, provided of course that some of the rain falls in their catchment areas.

Low temperatures are also expected in Gauteng, following the typical winter pattern characterized by icy mornings, mild afternoons and cooler evenings.

In another of his very nice reports after a motor rally in the Western Cape, Ian Bradley ZS1BR has noted that amateur radio operators once again played a vital supporting role at the 2026 Swartland National Rally, held on 24 and 25 April in the Swartland region of the Western Cape. As one of the key rounds in the South African National Rally Championship calendar, the event brought together rally crews, officials, support teams and volunteers from around the country.

Operations were conducted on 145.650 MHz via the Hawequa Repeater, which provided dependable wide-area coverage for the duration of the event.

Day 1 began at De Werf Padstal, where the radio team met to fit mobile radios and mag-mount antennas into the Clerk of the Course (CoC) vehicle, the Zero Cars and the commentator’s vehicle. The commentator’s vehicle was fitted with a radio but intentionally not equipped with a microphone, as no dedicated radio operator was assigned to that vehicle. This allowed the commentator to monitor the control net and maintain situational awareness without risk of transmitting.

Once the mobile installations were complete, the control station was established at Hermitake Restaurant, just outside the town of Hermon, which served as the primary Rally HQ for Day 1 operations.

Due to delays accumulated throughout the day, Stage 6 was ultimately scrubbed, and Stage 5 was run as the designated night stage, concluding at 20:30.

While there were no major incidents requiring the medical team to be dispatched there were plenty of retirements due to mechanical failure throughout the day. Of the 33 starters, only 19 teams completed all 5 stages.

Less than 12 hours later Day 2 operations began with control being established at Hoërskool Swartland at 08:00. Who said being a radio amateur was easy?

With the previous day’s challenges resolved and lessons from Day 1 already applied, the second day started far more smoothly.

The first two stages ran on time and were incident free. However, an accident in the third stage brought the rally to a halt. The CoC was quickly informed as soon as Control received the message so that the stage could be stopped and the medics sent in. It was soon determined that a spectator had been hit by a rock, kicked up by one of the passing cars, which broke his leg. While all safety measures were in place, rallying is still a dangerous sport, and unfortunate accidents do happen from time to time. We wish him all the best with his recovery.

No further incidents were reported for the day; however, the delays in Stage 3 did push the end time for the rally back by about 50 minutes.

ZS1BR comments that, In a motorsport environment where timing, safety and rapid coordination are critical, dependable communications remain essential—and amateur radio continues to prove its value in exactly this role. The 2026 Swartland National Rally once again highlighted one of amateur radio’s enduring strengths: the ability to provide reliable, infrastructure-independent communications in support of safety, coordination and event operations under real-world field conditions.

A sincere thank you goes to ZS1MJT, ZS1ATX, ZS1ES, ZR1JL, ZS1LAM, ZS1WV and ZS1YT who gave their time, equipment and expertise in support of the event, as well as to ZR1FR and ZS1JM for working their magic behind the scenes.

As a point of interest, 827 times were passed on top of all the other transmissions over the two days!

And thanks of course to Ian, who conveniently leaves himself out when he thanks the crew, for your efforts Ian at control, and for the report.

I’m sure you’ll all join me in celebrating the hundredth birthday of Sir David Attenborough this week, whose videos of nature all around the globe, have increased our knowledge of the world we live in. I see the plastic block company that is Lego has changed its meme on its boxes of kits that say for people from 2 to 99, to now say 2-100+, so that Sir David isn’t excluded from enjoying playing with the stuff! Happy Birthday, Sir David.

This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR, remembering with pain the occasions when he has trodden on a Lego block unseen on the carpet, and reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

Wednesday the 29^th April saw the first commemoration of the International Day in Memory of the Victims of Earthquakes, as the United Nations called on governments, cities, schools and workplaces to take part in the global campaign “Drop. Cover. Hold On.”

Led by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), the campaign promotes simple, life-saving actions to take during an earthquake and encourages the conduct of earthquake drills at least twice a year, including the 29^th April, to help make safe behaviour an automatic reflex when the ground begins to shake.

The International Day, designated by the United Nations General Assembly last year and observed annually on 29^th April, honours the victims of earthquakes while renewing global commitment to preventing future tragedies through stronger disaster resilience.

In a message marking the first observance, United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, highlighted the devastating impact of earthquakes:

“Earthquakes are one of nature’s deadliest hazards. In seconds, they can turn homes into ruins, undo decades of progress and claim thousands of lives,” he said, adding that while “earthquakes are inevitable, the devastation they cause does not have to be.”

Earthquakes are among the deadliest natural hazards. In the first two decades of this century, earthquakes — and resulting tsunamis — were responsible for nearly 60 per cent of all disaster-related deaths. Yet it is not the shaking of the ground that causes most fatalities, but the collapse of homes, buildings and infrastructure that are not built to withstand seismic risk. This makes resilience building through better planning, enforcement of building codes, and stronger risk awareness essential in reducing earthquake deaths and economic losses.

The international day in memory of the victims of earthquakes provides an annual opportunity for remembrance and renewed commitment to protecting lives and livelihoods from earthquake disasters. It also reinforces the priorities of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, which calls for understanding disaster risk, risk-informed planning, investing in resilience and enhancing preparedness to “build back better” after disasters.

Thanks to the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction for this report.

iol.co.za is reporting that Gift of the Givers activated its disaster response teams to provide aid on Thursday and Friday in the Northern Cape after severe hailstorms and flooding left communities vulnerable and homes damaged.

The humanitarian organisation confirmed it received requests for assistance from the Northern Cape Provincial Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), the ZF Mgcawu District Municipality Disaster Management teams, and the Dawid Kruiper Municipality.

The hailstorms left a trail of destruction in the areas of Karos, Leerkrantz, and Lambrechtsdrift, causing property damage and heightening the vulnerability of residents already facing difficult conditions.

In a separate incident, the Kuruman Disaster Management Centre also requested aid after flooding damaged several homes in the Joe Morolong informal settlement, which falls under the John Taolo Gaetsewe District Municipality.

Gift of the Givers said: “Humanitarian aid distribution to affected families in both districts will commence tomorrow.

“Gift of the Givers has responded to multiple disasters in these regions over the past few years and maintains a strong working relationship with the Northern Cape Government and local disaster management centres.”

The ARRL is reporting that amateur radio operators will participate in the Department of Defence’s Armed Forces Day (AFD) Crossband Test on May 9, 2026. The annual event will not impact any public or private communications.

For more than 50 years, military and amateur stations have participated in this interoperability exercise between the amateur and government radio services. The AFD Crossband Test provides a unique opportunity to conduct two-way communication between military communicators and stations in the Amateur Radio Service (ARS). These tests present both opportunities and challenges for radio operators to demonstrate individual technical skills in a tightly controlled exercise scenario.

The National Association for Amateur Radio hails the Armed Forces Day Crossband Test as an example of the core principles of the US Amateur Radio Service, with its volunteers contributing technical proficiency and readiness in support of public service and national needs.

Military stations will transmit on selected military frequencies and will announce the specific ARS frequencies they are monitoring.

Amateurs affiliated will then reply to the transmissions on the frequencies the military stations are listening to, thus confirming the crossband interoperability.

Thanks to the ARRL for those details.

A nice article this week by Chris Warren, who calls himself Off Grid Ham, discusses the advantages of Near Vertical Incidence Skywave (NVIS), in filling in the gap between local communications and DX.

He notes that you can use whatever HF radio you’ve already got. As for antennas, a simple wire antenna will do. There is no need for towers, beams, or specialty hardware.

NVIS is simply sending a signal deliberately intended not to “skip” great distances. To send an effective DX signal, one must transmit at a low wide angle to the ionosphere. In NVIS, the signal is sent at a very sharp, acute angle, almost ninety degrees upwards. That’s where the “near vertical” part comes from. This is how NVIS works. By “throwing” the signal at an acute angle, it by nature will not travel as far.

NVIS is perfect for filling the gap between local VHF/UHF and DX. For those concerned with survival/preparedness/emergency communications, you probably will not have a need to run DX. But regional comms in the 500-800 km range would be practical and useful.

Since NVIS intentionally discourages DX transmissions, it also by default discourages DX reception. This translates into less noise and interference. It’s like having a built-in filter on your receiver. And antennas need only be simple long wires or dipoles mounted 0.1 to 0.25 wavelengths above ground to ensure an almost vertical radiation pattern and the short range comms.

Visit www.offgridham.com/2026/04/nvis-is-an-overlooked-jewel for the complete article.

I’d like to greet the SARL on the day after the Annual General Meeting and the Awards Banquet, and thank the outgoing Council for a year of hard work keeping us steered in the right direction. Then I’d also like to congratulate the new Council on their election, and welcome the new office bearers to their posts.

Finally I’d like to congratulate all the awards recipients who were recognized, particularly the HAMNET members, nominated for their service to amateur radio and to the community, and for their willingness to help where needed. These are the radio amateurs who possess true ham spirit.

This is Dave Reece ZS1DFR reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.