The fading characteristics of the HF channel make communication over this channel difficult, even at moderate data rates. In this correspondence, a practical communication system is presented which has a near-optimal receiver for data detection and adaptive optimization of the receiver to channel parameters. The channel tracking is performed during the training sequence as well as during the detected data sequence. The receiver is fast converging, therefore suitable for frequency hopping. The correspondence presents the performance obtained on fading HF channels and the computational complexity via comparisons to previously published results. The performance is shown to be superior at comparable computational complexity.