The APRS Foundation: Carrying Bob Bruninga’s Vision Forward

How a volunteer-led organization is working to keep the Automatic Packet Reporting System open, interoperable, and alive for the next 30 years.

A Letter From the President

In May 2026, John Tarbox, WA1KLI — President of the APRS Foundation — addressed the global APRS community with a simple message: APRS belongs to the hams, and the hams must carry it forward.

Tarbox knew Bob Bruninga, WB4APR (SK), the inventor of APRS, personally. After Bob’s passing, no single person could fill his shoes. APRS had grown far beyond one man’s vision into a world-spanning ecosystem of radios, digipeaters, IGates, software stacks, and internet backbone nodes. To keep that ecosystem coherent, the Foundation spent over a year drafting a Comprehensive Strategic Plan — a living document that outlines how a community of volunteers can steward APRS for decades to come.

We believe this plan embodies this very idea: APRS is so large now that it does need some organization, but that organization must come from the APRS hams themselves.
— John Tarbox, WA1KLI

What Is APRS, Really?

Before you can plan for APRS’s future, you have to define what APRS actually is. The term gets thrown around loosely, so the Foundation drew a clear line around what it will focus on:

APRS is an Amateur Radio service system and activity that is:

• Peer-to-peer and ad hoc — packets flow station-to-station over RF and the internet, with no central authority.
• Unconnected and unidirectional — transmissions go out “in the blind,” addressed to anyone who can hear them, not to a specific recipient.
• Standards-based at two layers: encapsulation for transport (AX.25, LoRa, D-PRS, TCP/IP) and payload data (position, weather, telemetry, symbols, and more).
• An ecosystem that plays well together — interoperability is the whole point.
• Open and non-proprietary — anyone may implement it, free of intellectual-property encumbrances, just as Bob Bruninga intended from day one.

Crucially, the Foundation draws a boundary: APRS variants outside Amateur Radio (such as APRS-over-ISM-LoRa) are not its focus. APRS is for the hams, by the hams.

Why APRS Needs a Foundation

APRS’s peer-to-peer, ad hoc nature is both its greatest strength and its greatest vulnerability. Without a central authority, the protocol depends on:

• Maintained standards that everyone agrees to follow
• Interoperability across a wild variety of hardware and software
• Openness to new participants, developers, and experimenters
• A culture that keeps APRS approachable to newcomers

Bob Bruninga held all of this together for decades. After his passing, the Foundation argues, that role must be filled by an organized, unpaid, volunteer-run nonprofit — one that exists for the community, by the community.

The Strategic Goals

The plan lays out a set of must-have goals that every Foundation activity must serve:

1. Institutional structure — managed curation of standards so APRS doesn’t fracture into incompatible forks.
2. A strong community — hams should feel connected and invested in APRS as a whole.
3. An open, inviting culture — low barriers, welcoming to new hams and new ideas.
4. Dedicated core leadership — a team of deeply knowledgeable volunteers to champion APRS.
5. Low-cost entry points — affordable, simple ways for any ham to get on the air with APRS.
6. A progression path — clear steps from beginner to advanced so hams can keep growing.
7. Recognition — certificates, awards, and gamification to celebrate achievement.
8. Personal challenge and accomplishment — the ham-radio tradition of “I built this, and it works.”
9. A fix-it culture — operators who can maintain, upgrade, and help others with their gear.

Six Strategic Initiatives for 2026

The Foundation’s plan translates those goals into six concrete initiatives — each expected to deliver value quickly and to keep delivering for as long as the community needs them.

1. APRS Promotion Committee

Since Bob’s passing, there has been no concerted voice for APRS across the wider ham community. The Promotion Committee aims to fix that by:

• Building a refreshed APRS brand identity and engaging wherever APRS is discussed online.
• Showing up at major events — Hamvention, Hamcation, and local meetups — to give talks, teach the tech, and listen.
• Curating a human-edited knowledge base of APRS information, skipping the algorithm in favor of real ham experience.
• Publishing an APRS event calendar and partnering with clubs, SIGs, developers, and vendors.
• Developing tested equipment guides and a recognition program for hams who excel.

2. Example Technology Stacks

APRS can be intimidating: radios, TNCs, GPS modules, software stacks, antennas, and APRS-IS all have to play nicely together. The Foundation is producing tiered, real-world-tested guides:

• How to Make APRS Stations Work — building your own station, from cheap and simple to advanced.
• How to Make Digipeaters and IGates Work — fixed infrastructure that keeps the network alive.
• Understanding APRS-IS — the internet side of the ecosystem.

Every guide is vetted by Foundation technical experts and tested in actual on-air conditions before release. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t make it.

3. APRS Standards Committee

This is the heart of the plan. The Standards Committee is a community-led body that maintains the technical definition of APRS — RF protocols, APRS-IS, symbol tables, TOCALLs, and cooperative standards like D-PRS and APRS over Amateur Radio LoRa.

The process is modeled on the IETF RFC process:

1. Anyone submits a Draft proposal.
2. The Committee recruits a volunteer Working Group to review it.
3. The Working Group develops, tests, and refines the Draft in the open.
4. If recommended for adoption, there’s a public comment period so the entire community can weigh in.

The Committee will start by codifying the clarifications and corrections Bob Bruninga posted on his website, extract frequently-updated tables (symbols, TOCALLs) for separate maintenance, then move on to long-standing de facto standards like message numbering with ACK info. Only after that foundation is solid will it begin processing brand-new Drafts from the community.

4. APRS Reference Implementation

A standard without working code is just a document. The Foundation plans to build and open-source a reference codebase that faithfully implements the APRS Standard — no more, no less — so that:

• Hobbyist developers can learn the protocol directly from readable, documented source.
• Hardware vendors (think handheld radio manufacturers) can implement APRS correctly and easily.
• The community has a concrete example of every feature, reducing guesswork.
• Required, Recommended, and Elective standards are cleanly separable, so implementers can pick what they need.
• The Interoperability Lab has a “gold standard” to test other implementations against.

The reference implementation will cover only the APRS protocol layer — TNC and modem components remain the purview of individual implementers — and will be written in a language chosen for maximum portability and readability.

5. Interoperability Lab

With a standard and a reference implementation in hand, the next question is: does your gear actually work with the rest of the APRS world? The Interoperability Lab will answer that by:

• Publishing standardized test procedures divided by tier (Required, Recommended, Elective) and feature group (Position Reporting, Messaging, Digipeating, IGate, Weather Station).
• Maintaining a recommended reference endpoint station for testing against.
• Assembling its own hardware lab to test off-the-shelf equipment and publish independent results.
• Encouraging third parties to build their own testing facilities using the Foundation’s suites.

Three audiences are served: the user who wants to know if their setup works, the vendor who wants to know if their product works, and the testing facility that wants to publish independent results.

6. Protocol Advancement Committee

New ideas are the lifeblood of any living protocol, but APRS’s interoperability requirements make innovation tricky. The Protocol Advancement Committee exists to help vendors, developers, and garage tinkerers turn good ideas into universally adopted features — without breaking existing stations.

The committee plans to:

• Produce clear documentation on integrating new ideas without breaking compatibility.
• Answer developer questions and help avoid interoperability pitfalls.
• Help bring standard-enhancement Proposals through the Standards Committee process.
• Maintain a knowledge base of helpful protocol information.
• Broker relationships between vendors and developers.

The goal is ambitious: keep APRS flourishing for another 30 years.

The People Behind the Plan

The strategic plan was authored by a team of veteran APRS contributors:

• John Tarbox, WA1KLI — President of the Foundation
• John Langner, WB2OSZ — master of AX.25 and APRS protocol details
• Pete Loveall, AE5PL — uncompromising on APRS’s core technical values
• Jason Rausch, K4APR — APRS product developer and manufacturer’s perspective
• Ron Startzel, KB5LNC — technical accuracy and rigor
• Don Rolph, AB1PH — engineer’s mindset, demanding proof and detail
• Lion Templin, K1LEO — strategic thinking with decades-long perspective

The acknowledgements also honor Bob Bruninga, WB4APR (SK), the inventor of APRS; Jeff Hochberg, W4JEW, co-founder and visionary who brought the Foundation into existence; and Lynn Deffenbaugh, KJ4ERJ (SK), who helped start the Foundation with Jeff and John.

The Ask

The Foundation is explicit: none of this succeeds without volunteers. They need copywriters, web designers, technical writers, testers, experimenters, and people with ideas. The plan is a starting point, not a final word — a living document that will change as the community learns what works and what doesn’t.

Today what you see here are the actions we want you, the APRS community, to judge us on. If we achieve these goals, well, we hope you see success. If we fail, we hope you help us out with the needed pivot to the right thing.
— APRS Foundation Strategic Plan

If you use APRS, build APRS gear, write APRS software, or just enjoy getting on the air with it, the Foundation is asking for your help. Reach out through the Contact Us form on the APRS Foundation website and join a team.

APRS is for the hams, by the hams. Let’s keep it that way.

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APRS Foundation Inc © 2026. This article is a summary of the Foundation’s Comprehensive Strategic Plan, May 2026 edition. Strategic plans are living documents — always seek the most recent edition at the APRS Foundation website.