Any cruisers using/used winlink on ham radio for long distance email?

[GHA]

My ham set has not really done much for a long time til some recent ocean passages & then only for wfax, played with winlink before & great but slow, til I bought Vara HF the other day, big difference!!
EA5HVK

That's with 2 or 3 nice strong stations available though, but what about further afield?

Winlink position reports seem pretty global so seems like it should work OK everywhere (apart from the US who are scared of everything )

So has anyone cruised using winlink?
How was it?

Thinking mainly for getting some gribs offshore & letting someone know I'm still floating now & then.

thnx

 

[GHA]

Maybe people are more interested in watching youtube offshore these days

Starlink mini now released.

 

[Roberto]

Hello,
from the time abyss of the forum
First Atlantic crossing with Winmor HF/no-modem email
Now with Vara (though not moving big distances for the moment).
A growing number of cms/land stations, at the time Canadian station VE1YZ was one of the most consistent and covered us all transatlantics till South Brazil, about 8-9k km distance. US stations were ok for Position reports and saildocs queries, I never attempted any other type of message that might possibly look as third-party for fear of being blocked.

 

[GHA]

Hello,
from the time abyss of the forum
First Atlantic crossing with Winmor HF/no-modem email
Now with Vara (though not moving big distances for the moment).
A growing number of cms/land stations, at the time Canadian station VE1YZ was one of the most consistent and covered us all transatlantics till South Brazil, about 8-9k km distance. US stations were ok for Position reports and saildocs queries, I never attempted any other type of message that might possibly look as third-party for fear of being blocked.

Thanks Roberto, thought you might if anyone did
And that reply could not be more precise, exactly what I was interested in, South American availability. Which seems fine, great
And found your blog which is now with some others in the cruise planning notes
Noforeignland is great for that as well, quite often there will be links to blog posts at the bottom of an anchorage details page.

Did you get any weatherfax down there?

Though still thinking of some online python to grab a few 500mB & synoptic images off the web & shrink them right down then save somewhere online to be downloaded over HF using saildocs.

 

[Roberto]

Did you get any weatherfax down there?

Though still thinking of some online python to grab a few 500mB & synoptic images off the web & shrink them right down then save somewhere online to be downloaded over HF using saildocs.

At the time, Brasil was officially supposed to send SLP and SLP+24h charts via fax, though I could never receive them (nor hear any signal). Instead, via email I queried FleetCode files from the Brazilian Navy, quite nice product: small bit size, ITCZ position/intensity, text forecasts for various sub-areas of Metarea V and a very nice synthetic SLP chart of the whole South Atlantic (though of little interest to me, we remained in the tropical area). Unfortunately they stopped making them available.

Brasil SLP charts are available here (and nice too), but at >200kb it would be either Starlink or some crop/resize

 

[GHA]

At the time, Brasil was officially supposed to send SLP and SLP+24h charts via fax, though I could never receive them (nor hear any signal). Instead, via email I queried FleetCode files from the Brazilian Navy, quite nice product: small bit size, ITCZ position/intensity, text forecasts for various sub-areas of Metarea V and a very nice synthetic SLP chart of the whole South Atlantic (though of little interest to me, we remained in the tropical area). Unfortunately they stopped making them available.

Brasil SLP charts are available here (and nice too), but at >200kb it would be either Starlink or some crop/resize

Thnx.

This is shrunk down to 7.5% & converted to black & white with a quick few lines of python, size now 12.5K. 5% is 6K.
Blurry but still readable & very useful so could well be worth an evening getting some python to run in the cloud & make your own synoptics for saildocs to download over HF

Thanks for the info

 

[Bilgediver]

My ham set has not really done much for a long time til some recent ocean passages & then only for wfax, played with winlink before & great but slow, til I bought Vara HF the other day, big difference!!
EA5HVK

That's with 2 or 3 nice strong stations available though, but what about further afield?

Winlink position reports seem pretty global so seems like it should work OK everywhere (apart from the US who are scared of everything )

So has anyone cruised using winlink?
How was it?

Thinking mainly for getting some gribs offshore & letting someone know I'm still floating now & then.

thnx

There are more Winlink stations in the USA than anywhere else and Winlink is used onshore as well out there by volunteers assisting emergency using VHF and HF.

WINLINK Gives you a list of stations listed according to propagation conditions and or distance. VE1YZ is sometimes available from East Coast UK however nearer to home we have F5ZFX and the most accessible is HB9AK There are a few other Swiss stations but they do nor respond as regularly as HB9AK.I have little luck with any of the Norwegian stations . One of the best radio stations for commercial shipping was Bern Radio which had amazing coverage and HB9AK seems to replicate this.

 

[GHA]

There are more Winlink stations in the USA than anywhere else and Winlink is used onshore as well out there by volunteers assisting emergency using VHF and HF.

Unfortunately we're not allowed to use US winlink stations anymore though. And US hams aren't allowed to use non US stations.

 

[starfire]

Unfortunately we're not allowed to use US winlink stations anymore though. And US hams aren't allowed to use non US stations.

That's nuts, however, I used to have a US callsign, as well as my UK one, some kind 'neighbours' helped with a US address

 

[Bilgediver]

Unfortunately we're not allowed to use US winlink stations anymore though. And US hams aren't allowed to use non US stations.

I thought they were just tightening up on unlicensed operators but accepting licensed hams.. I might check this out as I can connect to east coast USA at certain times.as well as Canadian.

 

[GHA]

I thought they were just tightening up on unlicensed operators but accepting licensed hams.. I might check this out as I can connect to east coast USA at certain times.as well as Canadian.

Possibly, haven't looked since it was all kicking off. Unchecked from an AI so might be wrong >

Yes, US ham radio operators can use non-US Winlink stations to send messages, but there are some important limitations and considerations:

• The FCC rules confine automatic Winlink stations in the US to very narrow shared sub-bands on HF frequencies. Non-US stations are not subject to these restrictions.
• However, US hams must still follow FCC rules regarding 3rd party traffic. Sending messages on behalf of a business or for financial gain is not allowed, even via non-US Winlink stations.
• To use a non-US Winlink station, you need to connect to it directly or via a US station. You cannot send messages to the non-US station's email gateway - the message must be sent to another Winlink user.
• The Winlink system automatically forwards messages between stations worldwide, including non-US stations, to optimize delivery times and paths. But US hams must be careful which frequency segments their Winlink gateway is set to transmit on.

So in summary, while US hams can utilize non-US Winlink stations, they must still operate within the bounds of FCC rules, especially regarding 3rd party traffic. Connecting directly to the non-US station or routing through a US station is required.


Winlink-3rd Party Rules to be enforced - Cruisers & Sailing Forums
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