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SARTrack

SARTrack website.

Internet connection - server address
While you can connect to your favorite server, such as aprsnz.aprs2.net here in New Zealand, I would suggest that a rotate address such as aunz.aprs2.net which selects an available server in the Australia/New Zealand region might be a wiser choice for reliability, because your favorite server is not immune to electricity or internet disruptions in an emergency situation, even though 99.999999999999 percent of the time it is usable with excellent quality and will be ideal for general ham work. In fact, I rely on aprsnz.aprs2.net as providing a known perfect feed. But knowing that earthquakes, floods, fires and trench diggers cutting through fibre optic cables do actually happen in real life, the desire to minimise these issues leads me to recommend a rotate address.

Internet connection - filter
This field lets you tell the server what data you would like to receive. You really don't want to receive the full worldwide feed, not only would the volume massively overload your internet connection but your computer would choke trying to process such a large amount of data. Much like trying to drink from a firehose. There are a variety of filters but the popular ones are 'm' and 'r'. For example:
m/100 tells the server to send you beacons within 100km of you.
r/-43.5/172.5/100 tells the server to send you beacons within 100km of Christchurch, NZ.
m/100 r/-43.5/172.5/100 gives you both at once.

Interfacing to a radio.
The SARTrack software was written to be used with the extremely reliable TNC-X, which is an excellent choice for SAR users as it is the ideal plug-and-play solution. (TNC-X users stop reading now!) However, hams like to extract the most versatility out of any bit of hardware and are more likely to use their soundcard, as they can then use a wide variety of digital modes, not just the AX.25 mode used by SARTrack.

Soundcard use
SARTrack can use your computer's own soundcard to interface to the microphone and speaker sockets of your radio, or the 'data connector' if available. Usually this is by means of a program called AGWPE, but personally I prefer UZ7HO's soundcard modem as it is more versatile and has extra features. WA8LMF has kindly repackaged it in a conventional Windows installation file format which may be downloaded from here.