First Atlantic crossing with Winmor HF/no-modem email

[Roberto]

Following my former post

http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2720980

I am happy to say that we quite possibly are the first boat to have crossed the Atlantic with daily HF radio Email coverage *without* a Pactor modem, just with the PC and sound card, by using the Winmor protocol. We went from Banjul, Gambia to Salvador, Brazil.

We could send our daily position to our site:
http://www.winlink.org/dotnet/maps/PositionReportsDetail.aspx?callsign=M0ITA

we could also retrieve GRIB files, text weather bulletins, send a few updates to our blog and also getting medical advice via email from CIRM.

Coastal stations servers were from 6500 to 8500km away, we had a few hour period to connect every day.

For the moment Winmor is only available to licensed radio amateur, but as it looks formibably promising, cheap and easy to setup I think sooner or later it will eventually become available to Sailmail users too ?


roberto

 

[tri39]

That is interesting Branca that Winmor performed all the way across.
Be great to have an English recent summary on your blog.
What re your plans for the northern summer, staying south?

 

[serini]

How many coast stations?

Very interesting Roberto - can I ask did you have any trouble finding winlink coast stations which would connect with the new protocol? I realise when you update the catalogue of coast stations in winlink you see stations accepting P1 or 2 or 3 but I had not seen this alternative mode listed before.

 

[Roberto]

That is interesting Branca that Winmor performed all the way across.
Be great to have an English recent summary on your blog.
What re your plans for the northern summer, staying south?

Re plans, the main constraint is the 6month visa allowed to foreigners (you may stay six months, then you person have to leave for at least six months before being allowed to enter the country again). We like warm climates so no real incentive to go south, perhaps a few hundred miles but hardly more; at the moment, we think of staying around here for a few months (wonderful cruising ground, think about sailing in a Croatia without boats, 30°water, tropical vegetation, and -sorry for being grossly politically uncorrect- brazilians around), then leave the boat somewhere -which seem to be the biggest problem- during six months while we go home. Next year, after the six month period has expired, I'll be back to take the boat somewhere else.
OTOH, if we like here we might as well apply for an investor visa and spend a few years here, we have just arrived and all options are left open; Brazil is a different, difficult country, but very appealing for a number of reasons, business not being the last.



I promise Ill try to write an English summary :smile:




roberto

 

[Roberto]

Very interesting Roberto - can I ask did you have any trouble finding winlink coast stations which would connect with the new protocol? I realise when you update the catalogue of coast stations in winlink you see stations accepting P1 or 2 or 3 but I had not seen this alternative mode listed before.

hello serini,

at the moment, Airmail and RMS Express (winmor) are two distinct softwares for different technical environments, for Winmor you really need RMS Express. The free download version is fully functional there is just a unobtrusive popup window asking for a registration fee of a few tens dollars.
If you install RMSExpress, once you open the Winmor TNC, click on "Channel selection" and "Channel filter" leaving the constraints very wide (ie choose minimum propagation score 0 zero, maximum distance like 10000km, frequencies 2-30MHz, show stations for all hours) and you'll get the updated list of all coast stations.

** I just tried copy/paste on my pc with the list of stations but ctrlC ctrlV is inhibited by the software, sorry***

IMHO, the propagation score is not too significant, we could connect at high speed with stations showing a 30-32 score, and not even getting an answer from stations showing scores of 40+, so it pays to try and connect to as many stations as you can, one eventually gets a "feeling" as to which is available at a given moment.

Hope this helps
roberto

 

[jaba]

>I promise Ill try to write an English summary :smile

And maybe some more Italian or French posts ;-) You're getting lazy, sir!

 

[Roberto]

>I promise Ill try to write an English summary :smile

And maybe some more Italian or French posts ;-) You're getting lazy, sir!

call that... Brazil ?!


ciao r :smile:

 

[Phoenix of Hamble]

Sounds promising..... i've got an Icom M710..... i'll put off buying a pactor for a bit longer yet I think!!!

 

[serini]

Airmail

Thanks roberto for that, all understood. I got some more information which crossed between posts. It looks like Airmail will be updated to access Winmor soon, meanwhile there are instructions here:
http://www.lincares.org/Airmail-WINMOR.htm
on how to do it. Thanks for telling us about this, the cost of pactor 3 has put a lot of people off and knowing now that your own sound card can be used is a big step forward, even as a back up for those of us with Pactor modems.

Thanks!