VarAC Wednesday?

Quick background: Winlink users can practice their capability to send an email from their radios via VARA and Winlink Express every Wednesday. This is done through the Winlink network which are stations that monitor for attempts to connect to them. Once connected, you transfer your email which is then forwarded to the Internet or as a radio email (or VMAIL in VarAC speak). Winlink has a lot more capabilities, including 2 way Internet email. About 800 stations around the world send an email to the net control in Virginia for Winlink Wednesday, and receive a confirmation that's downloaded from the Winlink network via radio completing the demonstation of capabily. This is a very over simplified summary that misses a number of key capabilities of the Winlink sytem. Also, there are a number of other nets that do a Winlink Wednesday event as well. VarAC has a distinct advantage in sending Internet emails since VarAC's emails go through beaconing stations. You wait until you hear someone that's strong enough to easily take your traffic, and off you go. With Winlink, you can download a propagation report for all the stations on the network, but this is only an estimate and there's no way to know how well you can actually hear them. Of course, we also don't currently have 2 way Internet email capability. To learn more about Winlink Wednesday: https://winlinkwednesday.net/docs/All_About_Winlink_Wednesday.pdf What might we want to do? The reason we might want to do something is the same reason Winlink does Winlink Wednesday -- to give everyone a reason to get on the radio and use VarAC. For those participating in Winlink Wednesday already and are also VarAC users, it just adds a few extra minutes to the process of something you enjoy doing anyway. And those folks might send out a CQ or use VarAC for a few extra minutes that day. It would work the other way as well where Winlink users become aware of VarAC giving them another EMCOMM option and, perhaps, becoming active VarAC users. VarAC Wednesday would also be a global activity (as is Winlink Wednesday). At the simplest level, we could send the same email that Winlink Wednesday requests for that week to a VarAC Wednesday station who totals up the number of participants and posts that information on this Forum. We also have our Broadcasting function to remind users of VarAC Wednesday and to announce results. Why might we want to NOT do this?

Increased traffic on the calling frequency might be a consideration as well as QSYing stations that QRM chats in progress. And it takes several people to serve as net control to be available to collect the data and post it. Several to make sure the role is covered for vacations, and so forth.  In our system, VMAILs might be difficult to use in this manner, so it might be limited to Internet emails. It also might be that there are plans afoot that make doing something right now not a good idea. It could also be there's no interest.

Mark KB0US