This Again? I have twisted and worked my way around this problem for some time now and this probably isn’t the last time that I will revisit this topic. However, my station is evolving and as a result, I’m going to make some notes here and share what I know so that other folks can…
What Are We Doing? This blog exists for me to catalog sucesses and failures. The other thing it does is provide me with a place to put things so that I can get to them no matter where I am assuming – an internet connection. The topic for today is a refresher on my setup…
I started checking in to the [Winlink Wednesday Net](https://winlinkwednesday.net) hosted by David KN4LQN in January of 2022. I wanted to be sure that my station could send Winlink emails at all times. A net like this creates a sense of accountability. Knowing that there is a weekly event that changes its format a bit each…
It’s been about a month since I started doing all of my Winlink Wednesday check-ins using the Pat + Ardop toolchain. It’s been remarkably successful. I have transitioned away from Windows-Only software, though I do keep a laptop running Winlink + VARA HF handy. There’s no reason to toss a solution that is known to…
After my switch over to Ubuntu on my Surface Go 2, I went on the hunt for a way to continue my Winlink Wednesday check-ins and, more importantly, maintain my ability to use email from the field. I’ve chronicled some of that success here. In the end, I settled on using ARDOP with Pat as…
It took a minute, but it works. The last week or so has been a lot of fun diving into some software and tweaking things to get them where I need them to be. There are some really great free options out there for radio communications that do not involve MS Windows or any proprietary…
Here We Go Again… One of the reasons that I rebuilt my Surface Go 2 recently was that Winlink was exhibiting some behaviors that were incompatible with sending and receiving email via VARA HF. When software doesn’t do the one thing that I need it to do, well, something has to change. Prior to re-loading…
A few months back, I hit a real snag in my Winlink setup. At some point, my Surface GO 2 – post Win11 update – created a situation with Winlink where I couldn’t get the window to open reliably when establishing a VARA HF connection. The symptom was that the entire menu system in the…
Since we got a camper, we started spending time with Hipcamp. It’s a place where you can find private campgrounds. In essence, someone has a chunk of land and they set it up for camping and rent it out through this service. Kinda like Airbnb for camping. Using that service, we found a nice farm…
This weekend wasn’t a great one for portable operations in NE Ohio. The weather was cold and rainy. As someone who spends a lot of time outside, I get that there is No Bad Weather, Only Bad Gear. That said, I’m not out to prove anything and if it doesn’t look fun, I’m not gonna…