As I was preparing for the net, I compiled a report of our activity through November of this year.
Each net lasts approximately 15 minutes, and over these last 11 months there were 104 check-ins which translates to 1,560 minutes, or 26 hours of training and testing our equipment. I want to thank each of you for your willingness to join the net each month and I look forward to next year.
Tonight's training topic will be another plug for all stations who are not currently using Winlink to begin doing so.
In last month’s training topic we discussed the process of assessing damage after a disaster in preparation to submit a disaster report to local government agencies or a faith based organization. If there are no communication outages preventing transmission of the message by email, it is perfectly acceptable to enter the data in the specified form each recipient requests, and attach it to an email.
In the remote areas of the county where it may not be possible or feasible to hand-deliver paper copies of the forms, if there is a communication emergency as a result of the disaster, there are two options for transmitting the information - sending data messages over radio frequencies, such as Winlink messages, or voice messages over radio frequencies.
Having used the report form requested by local government emergency managers, as well as the Church’s disaster report form, sending the information via Winlink message is my preferred option. Imagine the time it would take for each community in the valley to read their damage assessment report line by line to the County EOC in a voice transmission…
And, to make it even better, thanks to the work of one of our area communications specialists, Brad Farnsworth, the disaster reporting forms used by the Church are now Winlink compatible, making it so much easier to complete and send the forms if normal modes of communication are not available.
Likewise, a member of Cache County's ARES leadership has prepared the Cache County Emergency Management reporting form to be used with Winlink. If you are interested in these forms please send an email to greg.fabricius@gmail.com.
Winlink Express is a radio email client, compatible with Microsoft-supported 32- or 64-bit Windows OS, including Windows 7, 8, 10, and 11. It can also be used on Apple Mac and Linux machines using a virtual machine engine or dual boot setup.
There is usually some additional hardware required before you can use Packet Winlink or VARA FM over radio frequencies, but thankfully there are inexpensive options that allow you to connect the radio you already have to a computer to send data over radio frequencies. In the blog post for tonight’s training topic I have included links to three manufacturers of these sound card interface devices.
If you have not added a higher power transceiver with an elevated antenna to your station, don't feel left out. There is a conveniently located gateway at the Newton EOC to accomodate operators in town using handheld radios.
If you are not ready to take the leap to add the radio interface components to your shack, do not let that prevent you from becoming familiar with Winlink. Once the client program is installed on a compatible computer all you need to send messages via Telnet is an amateur call sign and access to the internet.
If you have questions about installing or using Winlink please reach out to me by email or a phone call. I am happy to help.
Sound card interface links:
Digirig: https://digirig.net/
Signalink: https://tigertronics.com/slusbmain.htm
Masters Communications: https://masterscommunications.com/
From a training topic in 2022, here is a post with Winlink installation and setup links:
https://nwcvnet.blogspot.com/2022/09/winlink-setup.html