Hello SFARC Members and Friends,

We hope you all had a great extended weekend. We’ve got a couple updates for the week.

CAMPOUT LAST CALL — ARE YOU COMING?
The RSVP deadline for the Fall Campout is this Thursday. September 10th. If you can’t remember if you RSVP’d, check here: https://www.w6ek.org/activities/campout/campers. If you’re planning to join us, even if just for a day trip, please let us know. And for those attending, please DON’T FORGET to tell us what you’re bringing for the snack table and Saturday night potluck.

RSVP Link: https://www.w6ek.org/activities/campout/rsvp
Snack Table Sign Ups: https://www.w6ek.org/activities/campout/snacktable
Potluck Sign Ups: https://www.w6ek.org/activities/campout/saturdaypotluck

NEXT CLUB MEETING, THIS FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11th @ 7:30PM
In Person: Placer County HHS, Conference Center (Cordova Room 500), 11434 B Ave, Auburn, CA 95603
Online: https://www.w6ek.org/activities/meetings/jointhemeeting

Meeting Presentation:
Winlink E-Mail over MERCURY – Welcome to Free/Open OFDM Modes!

Coming up at the September meeting, Craig KM6LYW will be joining us to talk about Mercury, a new way to do high-speed digital communication via radio.

The guys at Rhizomatica just made a better VARA than VARA. Unlike VARA, it’s free, open-source, runs on Linux and Raspberry Pi. While not directly compatible with the proprietary VARA audio encoding, it does use the same API so existing VARA-HF clients (Pat, Winlink Express) can immediately leverage this exiting new HF radio transport!

Both VARA and MERCURY leverage “Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing” which is the foundation for modern/commercial RF transports, including WIFI. That’s how we get our speed and reliability. MERCURY includes “gear shifting” dynamically adapting to conditions and fading SNR.

Craig will discuss some of the interesting aspects of this new mode and hopefully send an email via Nevada using an experimental MERCURY Winlink email station (KO0OOO).

20TH ANNUAL WPARC LINCOLN HAMFEST, THIS SATURDAY @ 0700 / 65 McBean Park Dr, Lincoln, CA 95648
Flyer Link: https://www.w6ek.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/sfarc_fallcampout_fullcolor_promo_03-1024×692.png