There are much better ways to send emails. Being involved in aviation and Marine winlink had a purpose and was a pretty good system 20 years ago. There are much better an effective protocols.
You just showed everyone you didnt bother to watch, before leaving a ridiculous comment Lots of different ways to achieve different goals. This is just one of them. 73 Julian oh8stn
Awesome video, as always, Julian. Thanks for doing this. At the end, I was just about to ask "why not use a laptop instead of RPi and Galaxy" but you answered it for me. I am very familiar with the Icom interface, I have the 7300 and 9700. I am thinking of getting the 705. Although I don't do that much outdoor/portable operation right now, the idea of the capability of the radio (including satellite work) is very intriguing. How do you like the 705?
Thanks for the kindness and the comment. Actually I think it's okay to use a laptop or tabtop, as long as it's either USB or USB C powered. That makes it easy to charge and stay powered up in the field. If you're looking for low current draw, the Raspberry Pi is the king of that castle. Regarding the 705, it is an absolutely magnificent radio. Everything you could possibly need is already integrated, so a small go kit to keep it with you all the time is actually quite minimal. For winlink I use the 705 with a Raspberry Pi zero and my mobile phone. It can't get much smaller than that. Anyway, I think Icom has set the bar so high in the realm of portable radios, that everyone will be scrambling to catch up. It's an incredibly pragmatic radio. Thanks again for the comment and wishing you a wonderful Christmas. 73 Julian oh8stn
Thanks for sharing Julian. I've just started with my Ham Radio adventure and Winlink is one of my goals to setup.
Hi Julian, I am somewhat jealous of your setup! I have used a 7300 and Windows 10 laptop to run Winlink, in the past (mainly just sending test emails to myself!) but found that it was very difficult to find a usable gateway, either because of bad propagation or the very high QRN levels at my QTH. I had much better success with a 2m-based setup, but after watching your video, I'm going to give HF another try. I'll try the VARA software you mentioned, also, and see how that does. Merry Christmas to you all!
Wow! I just downloaded and tried the "trial" version of VARA - it definitely seems to get better results than WinMor!
FYI - the reason for your bad luck probably wasn't QRN, a few months ago ARFSI (operators of the WINLINK system) pulled the plug on the WINMOR HF mode, replaced now by ARDOP, VARA and Pactor. Read about it on this link, WINMOR is Deprecated
