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).

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Watts Up This Week

August 24, 2026 W6EK

We’ve got a few reminders this week and a notification about an upcoming special session.

BREAKFAST AND FOX HUNT: This Weekend (08/29/2026)
Breakfast is at Wings again this month. Bret (KB6LUV) will be leading our monthly Fox Hunt. The pre-meeting for the Fox Hunt will be in the Wings parking lot starting at 9:00 AM. In conversations with Bret, this promises to be an interesting and challenging Fox Hunt set up so don’t miss it!
Photo from July 2026 @ Wings

REMINDER: Campout Update
While the Bug and Hawk fire in Northern Nevada continue to be of concern, the campout is not in jeopardy at this time and is proceeding as normal. There is still a few weeks left before we lockdown RSVP’s so it’s not too late to join us. Check out campout.w6ek.org for more information.

REMINDER: 5th Wednesday Fun Is Back / SEPTEMBER 30TH FROM 6–8 PM!
Dust off your favorite QSL stories and join your fellow radio buddies for an evening of cold brews and good company at:
KNEE DEEP BREWING COMPANY
13395 NEW AIRPORT ROAD,
SUITE H IN AUBURN (NEXT TO WINGS)
Banzito’s Tacos will have their food truck onsite for the perfect pairing!!!

SPECIAL MEETING: SFARC Budget Review Session / September 2nd, 6PM – 8PM
If you’d like to provide feedback about the SFARC 2027 operational budget, please join us on Zoom.

73,
The Sierra Foothills Amateur Radio Club (W6EK)
(530) 492-0920

Website: www.w6ek.org
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