[aprssig] Announcing the VARAtrack APRS-over-VARA APRS Tracker

[Steve Stroh]

First, kudos to WA8LMF for his development of VARAtrack. It’s an
interesting development (to be mentioned in Zero Retries soon).

...

Simply… the developer of VARA has chosen to release VARA only on Windows.

Yes, VARA HF / FM can be run on other operating systems under Windows
emulation. But, many (including me) consider doing so even more “overhead”
than running native Windows in a small appliance computer that can be
dedicated to VARA, exactly like what WA8LMF has identified.

As to why use VARA HF… it’s the most advanced / robust / fastest data
transfer mode available for Amateur Radio HF bands (other than Pactor 4
which is only available in an expensive embedded modem appliance).

I discussed this issue in Zero Retries 0247 -
https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0247, in relation to VARA FM,
but the broad issues apply equally to VARA HF also.

One potential alternative to VARA HF is Mercury -
https://github.com/Rhizomatica/mercury but it’s not yet as mature, usable,
or as fast as VARA HF.


Steve Stroh N8GNJ


On Apr 19, 2026 at 21:16:07, KF4LVZ <aprssigZbr6 at acarver.net> wrote:

> Given the increasingly hostile behavior of Microsoft against users of
> Windows, why is this still a Windows-only capability?
>
> What is special about the VARA protocol that is preventing its
> conversion to something that could be run using Linux or other hardware
> solution like an FPGA?
>
>

-- 
Steve Stroh (he / him / his)
steve.stroh at gmail.com

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