Getting young people into amateur radio often comes down to having the right support network behind a school club — and the Azores has just built exactly that.

It's already been a busy year for school amateur radio clubs in Portugal, and particularly in the Azores, where clubs have recently started coordinating joint activities and sharing knowledge through a newly formed group known as RERA.

Spectrum congestion isn't just an amateur radio problem — it's now a public safety one, according to two of the United Nations' leading technical agencies.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) have called on governments to introduce tougher protections against radio spectrum interference, warning that the same frequencies used to monitor climate, forecast weather, and deliver early warning messages are increasingly being crowded out by satellite and wireless systems.

Every POTA or SOTA activator knows a session can throw up surprises. Few, though, turn into a genuine emergency response.

Michael Miller, KH6ML, had just logged his 11th QSO during a POTA/SOTA activation on 16th September at Hawaii's Diamond Head when his 12th contact of the day happened right there on the summit — not over the air, but in person. A visitor approached him for help: a woman had collapsed inside the summit's observation bunker after hiking the trail.