Messages you miss while you're off the air, held until you're back.
QRX watches APRS-IS for messages addressed to registered stations. If yours goes unacknowledged because the radio is off, out of range or on another band, QRX keeps it. Your next beacon gets a notification, and you read the message from the rig whenever you like. Voicemail, for packet radio.
- Compose an APRS message addressed to QRX.
- Send the single word REG.
- That's it. Missed messages are now held for your callsign, every SSID.
How it works
Catch, notify, deliverQRX sees the message and waits for the recipient's ACK. If none arrives within the wait window (300 s by default, settable per station), it stores the message and tells the sender: msg to N0JLF stored. Will deliver on beacon.
Your next position beacon, from any SSID that isn't a digi, iGate or weather station, brings a short notice with the number of messages waiting.
You decide when. Read messages one at a time with R, or send RLY and QRX re-sends them to your radio as if the original sender had just transmitted.
The message lands in your radio's message list under the real sender, so you can reply straight from the rig. RLY ALL replays the whole inbox, oldest first, paced so the channel isn't flooded.
Traffic from known bots and services, group and net relays (ANSRVR, APRSPH), a station's telemetry sent to itself, and copies of a command garbled in transit by a digipeater are recognised and left alone. A full inbox means real messages.
QRX never acknowledges on your behalf and never retransmits a message unless you send a command. All traffic is in the clear: QRX uses no encryption of any kind and stores only what was already transmitted on amateur frequencies (FCC Part 97).
Commands
Send as an APRS message to QRX| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| REG / UNREG | Register an inbox for your base callsign, or unregister and delete all your data |
| I | Inbox summary; moves the read cursor back to the newest message |
| R / N | Read the message at the cursor, or skip ahead to the next one |
| D / CLR | Delete the last message you read, or clear the whole inbox |
| RLY [ALL] | Re-send the last message you read (or all of them) to your radio as the original sender |
| W | Waiting messages, grouped by sender |
| A | Send a read receipt to the sender of the last message you read |
| S / STATS | Your registration status, or service-wide statistics |
| NOTIFY ON|OFF, QUIET n | Turn beacon notifications on or off, or mute them for n minutes |
| SET TIMEOUT s / GET SETTINGS | How long QRX waits for an ACK before holding a message (60–3600 s), or show your settings |
| IGNORE call / UNIGNORE call | Never hold messages from a callsign, or undo that |
| SET IDENT ssid type | Label an SSID: HT, MOBILE, BASE, DIGI, IGATE, WX, UNMANNED… Unmanned types don't get notifications |
| WHICH call | The best SSID to reach a station, scored from QRX and aprs.fi activity |
| SPLIT n / UNSPLIT n | Give SSID -n its own inbox, or merge it back |
| HELP [cmd] | The command list, or help for one command |
| BUG details | File a bug report; QRX attaches a one-hour packet trace to it |
| Command | Response | Function |
|---|---|---|
| QS | QS|3|2 | Poll: message count, sender count |
| QF | QF|1/3|KE0SMR-5|0428T1307|… | Fetch the message at the cursor (safe to repeat) |
| QD | QD|OK|2 | Confirm and delete the fetched message |
| QW | QW|2|W4XYZ:2|KE0SMR-5:1 | Message counts per sender |