Gary, i would love to see a "CLEAR ALL" entry, but i very much appreciate Irad's problem... "real estate" is becoming precious. Albert. EI7II.

Mark.. 200 bps is crawling. many a time i am hitting far over 4000 or more, with WINLINK/VARA, connecting to HB9AK in Switzerland about 1200 km away from me. RADIO IS A YEASU ft991a. but.... your SNR values must be very good to get near that. i've been much higher but those occasions are very rare. max 60 watts on a Endfed l/w antenna, it is all I have for HF. Albert

Markus. Gruss Gott. What I tend to do is get an idea about sppeeds first. If good, I get WINLINK to update the stations settings VIA RADIO. That is about an 11K file. I have had that update come down in QUAM 32 mode like a bat out of hell ! Agree, that very very seldom happens and you need a near perfect SNR. I have never send large files from VARAC.. so you will know much more about that than I do. Verzeiung.. mein Deutch sehr slecht. Albert.

Mark.... Irad has hit the nail on the head: PROPAGATION is ULTRA important. Remember... VARAC is an ARQ mode and will demand PERFECT copy, unlike JS8CALL that will insert a few .... where it can't copy that particular bit of text.. As IRAD says: Audio levels have to be set correctly for high speed and yes, While I never run more than 60 watts... I know of people that run 500 watt into their Antennas ! But ultimately Mark, , the propagation Gods have the last say. All else being equal, they will be the deciding factor. Albert.

Marie, While I cannot help you as I run a very different set-up I wanted to congratulate you on your efforts. Yes, at 75 learning is a bit harder. Don't I know it... I will be 80 this year. Marie.... PERSEVERE. There must be folks out here that run a similar set up to you and will be able to help. While I do not run either of them... I hear great things about Omnirig and FLDIGI and it should be easily possible to get your set-up working. TO ALL OUT THERE: ANYONE CAN HELP Marie with his setup ? Should be relatively straight forward. Many thanks. Albert. EI7II.

Victor On Win11. press the WIN key TOGETHER WITH THE SHIFT KEy and while HOLDING THEM DOWN, press the S key A very small window will open at the top of your screen. Forgetting the X, click on the one next to the X, or the one next to that one. That will copy EITHER the WHOLE VISIBLE SCREEN to the Clipboard, OR the window that has the FOCUS. ( and not the whole screen). JUST EXPERIMENT... You CANNOT BREAK ANYTHING. One you have what you "clipped" on the Clipboard, you can use PASTE to PASTE IT into whatever you want, be it a msg you are writing here, or a document you are working on. Again..... you cannot break ANYTHING, go and have a play.. YOU GET PASTE TO CLICK YOUR >RIGHT< MOUSE BUTTON and from the menu that opens when you do that? simply select PASTE. Victor.... Iam about 80. If I can do it.... SO CAN YOU !!!! . Albert. EI7II.

Dieter, can you comment on Irad's reply ??? Albert

Gary has already explained this to you so just keepon connecting. IF you are VERY LUCKY and condiitions are very good you might be lucky and get a 32 QAM connection. It does happen, but it is very rare. When that happens, VARA will truly run like a bat out of hell ! You can'yt miss it...as Gary mentioned, you will have 32 little blocks in that window !!! Good Luck.. and do not feel bad about asking.... I had no idea when i first started what all those colors and weird blocks meant. Albert EI7II.

I think this is a good idea. Low priority perhaps, but still a good idea. Anyone else commenting ? Albert

Rick. PERSEVERE !. I will be eighty this year and if I can master VARAC, so can you. Here is a video link, you might wish to watch. Do not try to take it all in at once and remember, Rome was not build in one day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiCkfvcnuOo Albert. EI7II..

Rick. So true. There are various reasons that people might want to leave their station running, but do not wish to beacon... for instance, if they do not want to announce their presense, for reasons only known to them. As I mentioned several times before... I hope that sometime in the future Irad ( VARAC Author) will implement the mechanism that that JS8CALL uses by setting an asterisk to show who has heard your station. But in fairness to Irad, he (and his team of helpers) has already produced such a fantastic program that we will just wait and see what the future brings ? Irad deserves our combined gratitude for having given the hamradio community such a brilliant program Albert. EI7II.

I do this all the time. if you know the call you want, nothing stops you from trying to either do a connect, or a PING to him/ her. works perfectly ok. Albert. EI7II.

Don, I will leave my station running for most of the day on 20. See if you can drop me a VMAIL? As per my QRZ page... I am often away, so I might not be able to handle a direct QSO. Hope you hear from you ? Albert. EI7II.

Brett and Don. We can only hope. but it looks like varac is outpacing js8 at this time. perhaps Jordan is hellish busy and just cannot spend the time ? ran varac this morning with a ZL2, rock solid connection for 45 minutes. at 50 watts. Amazing. I have so little free time to experiment. my whisper station runs almost 24/7 but that does not require me in person. unbelievable where my 100-200 milliwats end up. Hawaii, New Zealand, Antarctica, Taiwan. west coast of Greenland , Japan, etc etc all tribute to Joe Taylor who gave us that fantastic mode. Albert

Brett and Don. Just a THANK YOU for the excellent VMAIL description posted. the chances we will bump into each other are small... so when I get a decent USA varac connection i will leave a vmail marked at the station i am connected to, for you to pick-up. Was talking to LATVIA this morning...SNR was very good and VARAC was running like a bat out of hell. Unrelated.... the one thing I still think Jordan's JS8CALL beats VARAC in is the fact that the * tells me that i have been heard. To get VARAC to tell me that I have to PING the prospect. While not a big deal, it is another step to take. Due to Irad's tireless implementation of new features VARAC is going from strength to strength and IRAD deserves our gratitude for his continued pursuit to make this one of the finest Digital Comms programs around. Albert. EI7II.

Don. Many thanks. Don't get me wrong. I would love to be able to run 24/7. However, the criminally insane electricity prices here in EI land prohibit it for me. However... my Whisper transmitter does run almost 24/7 and is heard accross the globe. Were things different, I would most certainly run 24/7 I also used to do so with my KIWISDR unit, but even that is now switched off. Shame, as there are only 6 KIWISDR publically available units in Ireland. Yes, VARAC is great in relaying, just as JS8CALL is and I have used that capability in the past. Don, again, your answer is much appreciated. Let's hope for better times ahead. Wish I could afford solar panels with proper batteries but they are out of my reach moneywise. Albert EI7II

Irad has already addressed this, but from a simple user here. I think the PING feature is ecellent and I am a steady user of it. However, it does exactly what you dislike, it disconnects after it has givern me the SNR. I too get incoming Pings, but they do not bother me, it shows me that people are interested and have taken the trouble to see if they can reach me. I run whisper here too, almost 24/7, but the fact that I can see who heard me on Whisper, does not necessarily mean I can get them with VARAC. Might I suggest to be very careful with blocking call signs? There can be various reasons that folks just cannot handle a full QSO at a given time, and simply just PING you. Recently I just "pinged" a ZL2 to see if my 40 watts would get to him, and by golly it did. Showed me how effective the greyline worked. So...give us the benefit of the doubt, by pinging you i know i can reach you, even though i cannot accomodate a full QSO at that specific time.. Albert. EI7II.

Irad, THANK YOU. Lazy me was using the installer rather than the zip and indeed it caused problems.... VARAC could not write to the log file was one I remember. So... I bit the bullet and uninstalled after the backup and am very happy to report all is well now. Recommend to everyone that has unexplained issues to follow Irad's advice and put VARAC directly into the C root directory. Albert

Irad/Pat Unless those backup files are small.... i might open/close VARAC several times a day. backing up at EVERY closure might be too much. Rerason is that with the criminally insane electricity prices here, i cannot afford to keep varac running hour after hour. Albert. EI7II.

Bret, While I in principle agree with your comments, sadly, leaving the station on 24/7 is no longer possible because of the CRIMINAL KW/h prices we have to pay for electricity here in Ireland. I used to run my KIWISDR 24/7/365 but that is now switched off. I am looking at 50 eurocents per KW/h here so around 53 dollar cents. since the war in the ukraine prices for energu went insane. Albert. EI7II.