Posted: 7/4/2010 7:30:06 PM EDT
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A friend and I have been talking emcomms and trying to setup a system for a local group of us of where and when to listen in case something bad happens. Where pretty much set on the who, what and where. We have been talking about digital modes, we both agree that having the ability to leave a message for someone without them having to physically being at the station is nice. Packet radio comes to mind, ya I know its dead....but if its only a group of us with some TNC's equipped with local mailboxes would be great!
Although I have been looking at some of this modern stuff like APRS with its messaging abilities...although you either have to buy new radios with this built in or some sort of tinytrak4d...anyone have any experience with this? Also have been looking at winlink...I am not spending big coin on a pactor modem so it would be winmor for me, or RMS packet. I like this idea because it fits in with everyones comfort level with e-mail. What I can't seem to find out is that with RMS packet you can send e-mail traditionally and if poops the bed we can just connect to each other over packet. What are peoples experience with winmor? also anyone ever setup a RMS packet station? |
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Packet is not completely dead, but compared to Winmor I find it a bit obscure and complex. BPQ32 seems very popular for that sort of thing these days.
Winmor would work for you. Two clients can connect directly. The email must be addressed to the callsign you are sending to and then you just connect to that callsign. Stations can be left to run autonomously. When one of you connects to the other any mail waiting for you there will be delivered to you and of course outbound mail for that callsign will go also. Just to be perfectly clear there is no store-and-forward like in packet so you can't set up your own community mailbox. Only mail between the two "peer" callsigns will move when connected this way. It is possible to run your own Winmor community mailbox independent of the Winlink system by using the Winmor TNC software application and BPQ32 but the level of complexity ratchets up significantly. What I wouldn't give for frequency scanning support in Winmor. That would make it just about perfect. I don't think it's going to happen, unfortunately. |
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So let me get this straight WINMOR does require you have to a PC up and running? If I remember right this program uses your soundcard? Maybe WINMOR is the ticket. I guess we need to sit down and discuss which route we are going to go. Any digital mode is going to require a PC up and running. With Winmor you can leave it unattended and people can connect to your station. If you do run it unattended FCC reg's limit bandwidth to 500Hz so you have to use the 500Hz Winmor mode which is a bit slower than the 1600Hz Winmor mode but plenty fast for short messages. |
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Quoted:
So let me get this straight WINMOR does require you have to a PC up and running? If I remember right this program uses your soundcard? Maybe WINMOR is the ticket. I guess we need to sit down and discuss which route we are going to go. Any digital mode is going to require a PC up and running. With Winmor you can leave it unattended and people can connect to your station. If you do run it unattended FCC reg's limit bandwidth to 500Hz so you have to use the 500Hz Winmor mode which is a bit slower than the 1600Hz Winmor mode but plenty fast for short messages. Not 100% true. If you get an older TAPR2 TNC , like a MFJ 1270,1274 or 1278 or Kantronics PK88 or similar, you can leave it run packet by itself without computer being on. You must however, have a computer hooked up to retrieve any messages from the TNC. I used to do that on a daily basis. Come home and see the "mailbox" LED blinking was great. I miss packet... 
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First off, Packet Radio is not completely dead. I am seeing more and more of it as I dive deeper into BPQ32. There are BBSs all over the country that are still running and using the internet as a backbone, really do have good connectivity. On a local scale I see what I believe are several "nodes" that are like islands but are transmitting none the less. Since you are talking about a group of people who are wanting to work together then setting up the ability to have messages passed back and forth over packet is very doable. I'm not going into hardware at this point because there are lots of ways to handle this.
More importantly Winlink is becoming the ecomm flavor of choice on both HF and VHF. The local ecomm groups have Winlink RMS stations scattered about. In the next large scale emergency I think you'll see Winlink play a major role in traffic handling. (Not that it hasn't already.) This doesn't mean it fits your needs/goals but it is becoming a defacto standard in the ecomm world. Luckily both of these can be handled with the same hardware running at the same time! I haven't gotten to the point of Winlink RMS whatever running under BPQ, but I'm closing in on it. In this situation you could handle local stuff between your group with the BBS (or really either) and then the ability to pass traffic out to the internet with Winlink. |
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If you have capable radios you could send small text files between stations with fldigi and flwrap (I wouldn't bother with flarq). Well I've read up a bit, you would have to have a computer on and running to be able to leave a message. One of the goals I am trying to achieve is a HF digital mode where I can leave a message that is internet independent. |
| We are using VHF packet for a local option. This is nice because we can leave messages in our TNCs for eachother. The thought was an HF option for "not so local" the requirements is internet independant. I am not interested in ALE or winmor. I'm not even sure do they make TNCs for HF use with an on board mailbox? |
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http://www.kantronics.com/products/kamxl.html Quoted: We are using VHF packet for a local option. This is nice because we can leave messages in our TNCs for eachother. The thought was an HF option for "not so local" the requirements is internet independant. I am not interested in ALE or winmor. I'm not even sure do they make TNCs for HF use with an on board mailbox? |