The 2026 VaQP APRS Tracker will be available again this year and is now live! For the map view and text table view useful for home users to watch and track stations see:
This system is in support of tracking radio stations in motion over the March 21-22 weekend and participating in the Virginia QSO Party 2026.
The tabular, text view of VaQP station callsigns contains their 3 letter county or independent city (C&IC), their time spent in the C&IC (C&IC AGE) and the age (minutes) of their most recent GPS beacon spot (SPOT AGE).
Stations in a new C&IC less for less than 30 minutes are displayed in bold italic. Stations are sorted newest to oldest by their last GPS beacon time. Lines are color coded green, yellow, pink and red for ages <1, <2, <3 and 3> hours according to the age of the GPS beacon message. Calls are aged out if they haven’t generated a beacon in more than 4 hours.
The map functions the same as prior years. Click on a color county or city (C&IC) for its name and 3-letter designator. Click on a colored circle (green, yellow, orange, red) to zoom and expand a closely grouped set of APRS stations to reveal their individual callsigns. Use the buttons on the left of the map to focus on a certain area of Virginia (N, SE, C, SW).
For mobiles or smartphone users looking for just the VaQP tracker textual station data, check out the VaQP Mini Tracker URL here:
https://k1ra.us/vaqp-aprs-mini/
In motion station wishing to participate and using an Android phone, grab APRSDroid, free and tested from https://aprsdroid.org/download/ or Play Store (for pay). Any other APRS-IS compatible Android apps should work too.
iPhone users must purchase the APRS TX IOS app, which seems to be the least expensive app and supports APRS-IS. NOTE APRS.FI app does NOT work directly with the APRS-IS network so it will not work with my VaQP APRS Tracker system.
ALL app users be sure to get your APRS pass code at https://apps.magicbug.co.uk/passcode/ by entering just your call sign and retrieving the 4-5 digit code. Enter the code into the smart phone APRS app so your location is sent through the APRS-IS network for my server to detect and plot your location.
REGISTRATION – VERY IMPORTANT: There is no need to register your call with me as long as you follow the info about adding VQP or VAQP in your Beacon/Text message. Add the word VQP or VAQP (case insensitive) text anywhere into your periodic APRS Preferences “Beacon message” or “Comment field” broadcast text. You may follow with an optional frequency in MHz that you may be operating like 146.520, 28.400 or 7.040. Examples for APRSDroid can be seen here and here. My app will automatically add and start tracking your location and display it on the map and in the table view.
Please email k1ra@k1ra.us with your VaQP plans for using APRS, for example what CALLSIGN-n you’ll be using in case you can’t set up your Beacon so I can manually add you to the spotting list.
Email any comments, questions or suggestions to k1ra@k1ra.us
73
andyz – K1RA
p.s. – The Mini Tracker section of this project is based on a project developed by Rich K3FRG called arGeoDetector – Please consider using this tool if you need a means to determine your C&IC without a need for a connection to the internet.
