VARA HF, Email Over Ham Radio, Winlink Express Tutorial, Military Grade!! 

Yup.

Agree. As a shareware author I learned to never under estimate the amount of work others will ask you to do for free.

@@petersichel9934 I don't think a lot of operators understand the price/performance you get with VARA. Jose the developer is always improving the product with updates and has undergone some significant generational upgrades. He also has versions compatible with the Q100 satellite, chat versions and high speed FM versions. It is a steal for the capability.

Well I make and design firearm products and my opinion is Military Grade is far more superior and, provisions are made to validate specs and performance.

For those of us who have the big picture having been on the user and now on the builder side, that "low bid" just means the "low bidder" over inflated the price the least. No matter what the product still meets all of the required specs in the drawings and prints. If it's truly garbage the gripe you have is with the engineering and design entity.

Really? You are not the only veteran here by a long shot. Military Grade is a term used to indicate robust performance and durability standards.

When lives are at stake, that is a no brainer.

I paid too. Glad to for a good product. Work for free and beg for donations ... NO.

is thete part list? how to set this up?

Ardop will be my first choice, much better.

I don't use Winlink for casual contacts very often, except as a way to stay familiar with the system as it changes. Staying up-to-date is important for me because Winlink's use in Emergency comms is expanding pretty continually. The ability to send ICS forms, Radiograms, or other served agency forms digitally using a familiar email interface helps reduce operator errors, and produces a file that can be handled like any other digital file. Our state ARES organization has adopted Winlink for point-to-point comms between county EOC's and the State EMA Opcen. And the American Red Cross recently decided to use it heavily for the amateur radio segments of their emergency network. They have held joint ARC/ARES state-wide exercises, and there is a Nation-wide (USA) exercise scheduled for Nov 14. SATERN is encouraging their operators to participate in the ARC's practice Winlink nets and in the Nov exercise as well, to increase interoperability. -73

I see what you did there. I approve uncoditionally. lol

I used to use SailMail, but they kept raising the price. On the other hand, it always worked because the shore stations were professional in design and maintenance. And for some reason I could never connect to a WinLink station from the boat even with the pricey German modem.

Totally agree! Jose is a one-man show with VARA. $70 is a pittance compared to the cost of ham gear in general and for commercially written software for hams. If there was any problem with VARA its that Jose won't escrow his code so that VARA could be continued if he gets run over while running with the bulls. Besides, for the license fee one gets the speed and robustness of Pactor 3 at a fraction of the cost.

Well, funny you should ask.... I spent the last day and a half messing with it, followed by the entire last week.. I am right there, just one more obstacle but I work on it ALL THE TIME and you will see the result any day now

When you are in VARA mode the channel list only has VARA nodes listed

The higher speed allows you to send larger files. If you try to send a 100KB email via ARDOP, Winmor, and VARA, you'll already be on the third email with VARA before the first one finishes transmitting via ARDOP/Winmor.

absolutely LOL stick around subscribe comment and learn!!!

You can send your message to many many stations around the world who's internet isn't down.

The VARA and other protocols' channel selection will always work. It depends on the internet just for updating the list and associated data for each gateway. If you had to, you could update the list with the Update Via Radio feature, but I wouldn't recommend it considering how much data needs to be transferred.