Newsreel.com.au says that Disaster communications and response in Far North Queensland have been boosted by a doubling of satellite communication capabilities and the acquisition of an industrial drone.

The State Emergency Service has taken possession of three new Airbridge Resilient Network Infrastructure (ARNI) communications trailers and a DJI Flycart 100 Drone, one of the first of its kind available to emergency services in Australia.

Queensland Police Deputy Commissioner for Disaster and Emergency Management Chris Stream said the ARNI trailers provided reliable satellite communication access to isolated communities during emergencies.

Deputy Commissioner Stream said the self-contained, self-powered units feature high-capacity battery storage, advanced satellite equipment, and self-managed WiFi systems, ensuring critical communication links remained operational when traditional networks were unavailable.

He said the three new trailers were in addition to two already deployed to the region in November last year.

“The Far North is no stranger to severe weather, and the communication impacts it brings,” Deputy Commissioner Stream said.

“The value of the ARNI trailers has been demonstrated during the past higher risk weather season, particularly during Tropical Cyclones Koji and Narelle.

“The trailers were able to be deployed to remote communities of Cooktown and Wujal Wujal, to support multiple activations.”

The State Emergency Service Far Northern Regional Director, Wayne Coutts said the Flycart 100 drone was a state-of-the-art, heavy-duty industrial drone and, complete with a winch, would be used for deliveries during disasters.

“We will now be able to fly more supplies into communities isolated during disasters,” Regional Director Coutts said.

“Whether it’s food, water, equipment or other supplies, this is a game changer for disaster response in Queensland.

“The Flycart and ARNI units are a major boost in our ability to keep Queenslanders safe during some of their toughest times.”

And thank you to newsreel.com.au for the report.

Related to the World Cup in America, insidetowers.com reports that The FCC played a critical role in ensuring the communications that support public safety, broadcasting, and the fan experience remained reliable throughout the 2026 FIFA World Cup. As the agency that oversees the nation’s wireless networks, the Commission conducted advanced planning, testing and coordination activities with stakeholders across the federal government, including law enforcement officials, in all 11 host cities to make sure that on-site public safety communications were seamless and reliable. That’s according to FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau Chief Zenji Nakazawa and Enforcement Bureau Chief Patrick Webre.

The agency purchased sensors that were used to monitor and geo-locate sources of wireless interference. If anyone or anything tampered with public safety communications in or around any World Cup matches, the Commission would know about it and work to fix it quickly, they said in a blog.

Nakazawa and Webre have seen these tools make a difference during FCC support for the Super Bowls. “Three days before kickoff in 2023, an illegal transmission disrupted the radio communications of police and fire officials across a 400 square mile area,” they said. Local officials said it once took over a month to fix a similar problem. The FCC’s detection equipment identified and resolved this 2023 problem in two hours. At another Super Bowl, the FCC team identified public safety dead spots inadvertently caused by broadcasting equipment used during the halftime show and helped to develop a work-around.

Fans expect strong, reliable wireless service no matter how crowded the stadium gets. “World Cup-sized crowds will put our networks to the ultimate test,” they said. To make sure that fans can reliably use their devices when and where they want, the agency worked with industry to support high-capacity wireless and 5G connectivity in and around host venues. It also granted a number of temporary authorizations to allow for the “substantially increased” spectrum use for these events.

The FCC also plays a role in mitigating risks associated with unauthorized drone operations at sporting events. The FAA along with DHS and DOJ instituted “No Drone Zones” over and around the arenas, Inside Towers reported.

Thanks to Leslie Stimson of Inside Towers for the report.

Daily.hamweekly.com reports that HAMgpt, a new AI assistant created specifically for amateur radio operators, is now open to the public at hamgpt.co.

Unlike a general-purpose chatbot, HAMgpt is built around the real operating situation of each ham. It can take into account the operator’s license class, country, grid square, radios, antennas and operating history, then combine that station profile with live propagation, space weather, DX activity and current on-air conditions.

Its main purpose is to answer one deceptively simple question: What can I do with my radio today?

Amateur radio offers an enormous range of possibilities: local repeaters, HF DX, satellites, digital modes, POTA, emergency communications, antenna building, contesting and experimentation. For many newly licensed operators, however, the first experience is much less exciting. They pass the exam, buy an HT or an entry-level rig, turn it on, hear static or silence, and do not know what to try next.

HAMgpt was built to help with that exact moment.

“Many new hams do not leave the hobby because they lack information,” said Rodrigo Vazquez, AK6FP / LU6ERV, creator of HAMgpt. “They leave because nobody tells them what actually to do with the radio in their hand. HAMgpt is not trying to out-explain a general chatbot. It is trying to be the reason someone gets on the air instead of putting the radio back in the box.”

In amateur radio, an experienced operator who helps others learn the hobby is traditionally known as an Elmer. HAMgpt is designed to work like a personal digital Elmer that already knows the operator’s station.

Users can save their license class, location, exact radio models and antennas. HAMgpt reuses that information across conversations, so the operator does not need to explain the same setup every time. That context changes the quality of the answer.

For example, HAMgpt can help:

1. Identify repeaters that may realistically be worked with a particular HT or mobile rig.
2. Suggest HF bands based on live conditions and the antennas installed at the station.
3. Recommend satellite passes that fit the operator’s equipment.
4. Find nearby POTA parks to activate.
5. Explain how to configure a specific rig for FT8, Winlink, APRS or satellite work.
6. Provide antenna dimensions and construction guidance for the operator’s target band and available space.

This is what separates HAMgpt from a generic ham-radio Q&A system. The goal is not merely to answer, “What is a repeater?” or “What is an inverted-V?” The goal is to answer, “What should I try with my station right now?”

Very enterprising! Rodrigo’s chatbot is to be congratulated.

This is Dave Reece, ZS1DFR, hoping that HAMgpt will never be able to pick up my mike and call CQ for me, rendering me unnecessary at my station, and reporting for HAMNET in South Africa.

GDACS continues to report on Tropical Cyclone BAVI, a category 5 Hurricane, which damaged islands in the North Mariana group on Sunday and Monday, and has since been forecast to affect Taiwan, China and Japan, threatening 63 million people in its path with winds of greater than 120km/h. Maximum wind speeds of 280km/h have already been recorded.

The Taipei Times says that the Taiwanese government has mobilized disaster relief personnel nationwide and concluded preparations in areas vulnerable to isolation during severe weather, according to Premier Cho Jung-tai.

Nationwide, authorities have ensured 6,662 disaster response personnel, 4,497 rescue vehicles, 1,254 boats and 24 helicopters are on standby, Cho wrote on Facebook. Preparations completed in 173 locations considered at risk of becoming isolated during the storm include stockpiling supplies, ensuring communications capabilities and arranging evacuation shelters, said the premier. He said the military has also placed 28,922 troops on standby for potential disaster response operations.

As of the end of last month, the Ministry of the Interior had trained more than 150,000 certified disaster prevention volunteers, enhancing Taiwan’s disaster resilience, he added.

Cho urged local governments to make full use of the remaining time before the typhoon’s arrival to accelerate drainage ditch clearing and reduce the risk of flooding and other storm-related disasters.

In the meantime China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region has experienced heavy rainfall from a typhoon named MAYSAK. News.cgtn.com says that the Ministry of Emergency Management (MEM) has coordinated with multiple agencies, including the China Meteorological Administration and the ministries of Water Resources, Natural Resources, Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and Transport. National-level emergency command operations have been activated.

Typhoon MAYSAK, the 10th typhoon of the year and the first to make landfall in China in 2026, struck the southern island province of Hainan on the 3^rd of July before moving inland and unleashing torrential rains across south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Record-breaking rainfall triggered severe flooding in multiple cities. More than 375,000 people in Guangxi have been affected, and at least 130,000 residents have been evacuated from flooded areas.

In the hardest-hit town of Yunbiao, Hengzhou County, Guangxi, a massive flood left more than 15,000 residents stranded and the entire town submerged, making roads impassable for traditional ground rescue vehicles. A drone rescue team drove over 1,700 kilometers and traveled for 18 hours to reach the disaster zone.

The team deployed two heavy-lift drones, each with a wingspan of over three meters and a carrying capacity of 100 kilograms, along with three smaller reconnaissance drones. Using drones equipped with ropes, the team successfully hoisted two stranded residents off a flooded rooftop and transported them to safety via inflatable boats.

At Guangxi authorities’ request, the MEM deployed two Wing Loong UAVs for emergency communications and, together with the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration, allocated relief supplies.

The UAVs flew continuously over the affected regions, restoring mobile phone connectivity for residents cut off by the floods. Alongside the drone deployment, the ministry also sent 1,372 personnel from the China National Comprehensive Fire and Rescue Team, 270 vehicles and 140 boats, as well as 350 specialized rescuers with equipment.

The National Development and Reform Commission has allocated 100 million Yuan ($14.7 million) from the central budget to rebuild damaged infrastructure, including roads, water conservancy facilities, schools and hospitals, to help restore normal life.

As the storm continues to bring heavy rainfall to parts of southern and central China, authorities are closely monitoring river levels and flood risks. The Ministry of Water Resources is using satellites, ground-based radar and digital simulation models to track rain clouds and predict how floodwaters may spread, helping identify high-risk areas earlier and issue faster warnings.

By Friday, the death toll in all the flooding, tornadoes and also a landslide, had amounted to 39, with 130000 people evacuated from their homes. Remember they still face Cyclone BAVI, which is approaching from the South East.

Here’s an interesting concept from hackster.io.com/news. They note that invisible radio waves are bouncing around everywhere, carrying everything from Wi-Fi traffic and drone video feeds to satellite transmissions. Engineers have long relied on spectrum analyzers and software-defined radios to listen to these signals, but actually seeing where they originate is another matter entirely — and doing it typically requires complex and expensive laboratory equipment well beyond the reach of most hobbyists and educators.

QuadRF was designed to change that by packaging a complete 4×4 MIMO software-defined radio, phased-array antenna system, Raspberry Pi 5, and open source software into a single development kit. The result is what its creators describe as a real-time RF camera, capable of displaying nearby wireless transmitters as augmented reality overlays while also serving as a platform for beamforming, wireless research, robotics, and advanced SDR development.

At the core of the system is a coherent four-antenna array capable of measuring tiny differences in the arrival time of radio signals. Those measurements are transformed into a live, 30 frames per second augmented reality display that overlays wireless transmissions onto the real world through a smartphone or laptop. Instead of simply showing signal strength on a graph, QuadRF can identify the physical location of Wi-Fi access points, wireless cameras, drones, beacons, and other transmitters, with each source color-coded by frequency.

The visualization is only one part of the package. Users can tap on an identified signal source and route it into SDR software for decoding, or transmit a beam-formed signal back toward the device. The included Raspberry Pi 5 runs the web interface, calibration software, and many SDR applications locally, while heavier signal processing workloads can be offloaded over Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, or Wi-Fi to external software such as GNU Radio, SDRangel, or Pothos.

The hardware is built around a full-duplex 4×4 MIMO architecture with four transmit and four receive chains operating across the 4.9 to 6.0 GHz C-band. Each antenna supports up to 40 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth and up to 1 W of transmit power. Signal processing is handled by a Lattice ECP5 FPGA working alongside the Raspberry Pi 5, with a completely open source software stack released under GPL licenses.

The platform can be used to study RF reflections and material absorption, develop beamforming algorithms, build high-bandwidth mesh networks, improve long-range wireless communications, characterize antennas, or provide robots with a new method of sensing their environment using radio signals. The creators also envision it as an educational platform for teaching phased arrays, MIMO communications, and spatial RF concepts without requiring professional laboratory equipment.

While a single QuadRF functions as a standalone phased-array SDR, multiple units can be combined into much larger antenna arrays. The developers envision everything from 240-element amateur radio arrays capable of Earth-Moon-Earth communications to backyard radio telescopes.

Thank you to hackster.io.com for that fascinating description.

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

Sadly, Venezuela is still in the news. Because the epicenter of the twin quakes occurred in a densely populated area with lots of multi-storey buildings, the devastation has been far worse than a magnitude 7.5 earthquake in a rural area might have been. Aerial views of the areas around Caracas and la Guaira show complete destruction with mounds of rubble lying everywhere.

Original posts of casualties took off very quickly, and the last figure I saw yesterday was a death toll of at least 2645, more than 12000 injured and with thousands seemingly still unaccounted for. Good news stories have been posted of a 3 year old child surviving for 3 days before being rescued, and a security guard stuck in his little cubicle being rescued after 8 days, but the “golden window” I spoke about last week has seemingly closed, and not many more survivors will still be found.

Rescue crews from many countries, not only from the Caribbean area, are still present, and the clearing of urban rubble continues. It may take weeks before the final casualty total is revealed.

Carlos CO2JC of IARU region 2, has requested that their emergency frequency of 7135 kHz LSB still be avoided, in case dramatic events occur. Greg G0DUB says he will notify us in IARU region 1 once 7135 is freed up.

On Wednesday, news.sky.com reported that 59000 buildings had been destroyed, that more than 43000 people were still unaccounted for, over 15000 were homeless and that diseases were starting to spread in the disaster zone because of lack of clean water, food supplies, and sufficient medical supplies to deal with the open wounds of the survivors. The United Nations was preparing to provide at least 10000 body bags.

And on Wednesday morning early, our time, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck a fairly sparsely populated region in China at a depth of 10km, exposing a small population of about 8000 to severe shaking. China does not usually report on casualties in these situations, so we must hope that damage was minimal, and injuries few and far between

Also on Wednesday, first mention was made by GDACS of an RED Alert for a  Tropical Cyclone, first named NINE, but later formerly named BAVI, threatening the Northern Mariana Islands including Guam from an east-south-easterly direction, with maximum wind speeds of up to 275km/h, as a category 5 cyclone. About 141000 people are in the path of winds of up to 120km/h. The storm will cross the islands today (Sunday) and tomorrow (Monday).

By Monday of this week al, reports were already starting to emerge in the local newspapers from counties and states in the US after the Field Day weekend. I think we must wait for the ARRL to report formally on the success or otherwise of the weekend, but it certainly looks as though thousands of radio operators had a very good time.

Scott Buchanan, writing in economistwritingeveryday.com has a cheerful and fresh way of telling the story. I’ll quote most of it here, perhaps to intrigue the fringe listeners to this bulletin who don’t know what this is all about. He writes:

“When visiting a large county park the other day, I noticed a sign for “Amateur Radio Field Day, Public Welcome.” I have always had great respect for amateur radio operators, for their technical prowess and for their service in emergencies when other forms of communication fail. So, I wandered over to see what was happening.

“There were maybe half a dozen large screened in gazebo type tents. In each gazebo there were one or two men seated before some radio apparatus on a table, with a couple other guys sitting in more of a spectator role, chatting away. Someone had used a potato-cannon to shoot a fishing line over the top of a tall tree, which was then used to pull up a rope, which was then used to pull up a long antenna wire. There was also a tall standalone antenna mast, held erect by three guy wires staked to the ground.

“What were these guys doing? They were mainly doing what hams mainly do, which is reaching out across the continent and across the globe, to make contact via radio with other amateur radio operators. Some were doing it by voice communication, using single side band (SSB) technology for more efficient transmissions. Some were using a computer interface to turn their transmissions into a digital format, which could be transmitted and received more effectively. The guy on the other end would have matching software to turn the numbers back into words.

“And there was one guy doing it the old-fashioned way, listening to “beep, beep, beedily beep” Morse code coming in, and transcribing that to letters and numbers. The Morse code beeps can cut through radio clutter more strongly than voice signals, allowing more distant contacts with relatively low power, which is kind of a bragging point.

“The special thing about so-called short waves used by hams is that they can reflect or refract from the underside of charged layers high up in the atmosphere. Your signal can bounce off those layers and come back to earth hundreds or thousands of miles away. Before the Internet, this was actually a big deal. The only other ways to communicate back then with distant people were snail mail, telegraph, or long-distance telephone, which was super expensive and grid dependent. I put together a short-wave radio kit around 1970, and it was pretty amazing to hear a station broadcasting from Ecuador, not to mention Radio Moscow. Voice of America and BBC short wave broadcasts helped to keep the ideal of freedom alive in Soviet occupied Europe for many decades.

“I am something of a techie myself, with a professional career in chemical engineering. But I found myself far out-geeked by these gentlemen. They would be certainly eager to help in the event of emergency, but that’s actually a very rare thing. It seems much of the thrill is simply the technology itself. To truly understand antenna theory, and even to design and build your own radio, are marks of distinguishment in that crowd.”

Thank you Scott for letting me borrow those paragraphs from your blog. The amazement of an “outsider” is evident in your writings.

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