A method and apparatus for communicating a message from a transmitting station to a remote receiving station by adaptively selecting a retransmission protocol from two or more retransmission protocols based on at least one changing transmission variable is described herein. The transmitting station transmits a first version of the message in a first transmission. When the previous transmission was unsuccessful, a controller adaptively selects either the first version of the message or a second version of the message in accordance with the selected protocol.