Groups and nets

ANSRVR is the APRS group-messaging service: subscribe to a group and it relays every member's traffic to you. The app turns each group you join into a net room — one conversation with everyone in it, instead of a separate thread for every operator who checks in.

The group directory

Groups & Nets lives on the Services tab: every group on ANSRVR, what each is for, and the ones you are in. You can fetch the full directory from ANSRVR itself — the app warns you first that ANSRVR answers with about 35 messages over a minute or two, and the list fills in as they arrive. The directory is searchable and sortable (A–Z or busiest first, with your groups first), and each entry shows its subscriber count with the date it was fetched, since counts change over time.

You can also ask ANSRVR which groups your callsign is currently subscribed to, and join a group by name — a group that does not exist yet is created, with you as its owner.

Joining a group

Joining sends J <group> to ANSRVR and opens the room. Subscriptions lapse after 12 hours — that is ANSRVR's rule, not the app's — so staying in a net across a day means renewing.

A group as a room

Once joined, the group appears on the Messages tab as a room: everyone's relayed traffic collected into one conversation, in order, with each post attributed to the operator who sent it. Your check-in status and time remaining are shown at the top — "Checked in" with how long is left, or "Not checked in yet", or "Subscription lapsed" — and the strip is honest about uncertainty: a renewal the app has sent but ANSRVR has not yet confirmed says so rather than showing a countdown it cannot stand behind.

A roster shows the operators heard in the net and how many posts each has made.

From the same screen you can:

Check in — drafts a check-in post and opens the composer, so you can add your name and location before it goes out rather than sending a bare "Checking in".
Renew — sends K <group> to hold your subscription another 12 hours. The room warns you when your subscription is nearly up.
Post — anything you write goes to the whole group. The exact packet is shown above the composer as you type, because the addressing prefix uses part of the 67-character limit and the preview shows how much is left.
Leave — sends U <group>. Net traffic stops arriving; the conversation stays on your phone.

Posts carry the same delivery states as any other message — see Messaging — and renew and leave show their own send status, because APRS gives no guarantee a command arrived.

#APRSThursday, the weekly net

#APRSThursday is the busiest net on ANSRVR by a wide margin, and the app wires it in as the weekly event it is. The room's header knows the schedule — the net runs Thursday UTC, and the banner says "Net is live" with when it closes, or "Net is closed" with when it next opens.

The net keeps a published log through APRSPH, the #APRSThursday logger, which is also in the service directory. When APRSPH confirms your check-in, the room shows "Logged on the net list" with the logger's own UTC timestamp — the same figure you will find beside your callsign on the published list. The two confirmations answer different questions: ANSRVR says the net heard you, APRSPH says the net recorded you.

APRSPH also supports logging a check-in without relaying it to the whole group: a message sent directly to the logger reaches the log without every subscriber in the group receiving a packet. The service screen is clear that the logger does not reply to it, so a quiet check-in does not read as a failed one.

Notifications

Net rooms alert like any other conversation. The room suppresses notifications while you are looking at it, and its header carries a switch to quiet it. A muted room stops notifying but still shows its unread count in the Messages list.

Messaging — delivery states, retries, and the thread list.
APRS services — the rest of the service directory.
Connect to APRS-IS — nets work over the internet as well as RF.

Last updated 31 August 2026