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).

For the August 2026 General Meeting, Mark W6MWK and Smitty WB1G will be giving a wrap-up presentation on last month’s ARRL Field Day event. By all reports the event was a lot of fun, but how’d we do?

Following the Field Day presentation, Smitty WB1G will give an interactive talk about eSSB, an experimental voice mode that is actually NOT illegal! (Good news, right?)

Finally, a reminder that anyone who worked any stations during Field Day from a location other than the club’s FD event can submit their score and include their points in the club’s aggregate score. Just go to https://field-day.arrl.org/fdentry.php and follow the instructions. Be sure to designate “Sierra Foothills ARC” in the “Club or Group Name” field. Even a single contact helps the bottom line! (And, no this is not a solicitation if you’re already doing the same for another club.) Entries are due by 7/28!