New Florida WINLINK HF-Forwarding Gateway Opens in Crown District
by Gordon Gibby KX4Z
Retired cardio-thoracic nurse Ray Cook, Jr., WD4SEN of Middleburg, FL, turned on the third WINLINK high frequency (HF) gateway in the North Florida Section in early August. He already had considerable experience with multiple VHF WINLINK gateways and an APRS digipeater in Clay County. Ray’s volunteer Kenwood rig runs about 100 watts output through an automated tuner into an off-center fed dipole and provides both WINMOR (sound-card mode) and PACTOR free radio email access for thousands of miles. Earl Leach, WX4J, graciously donated the PACTOR modem for this effort. Earl put years and years of volunteer service into this system.
Why is an HF-forwarding gateway important for emergency communications? The answer is that it can provide communications even after a loss of the Internet and normal telecommunications. Most VHF WINLINK gateways only connect to the Internet, and during a telecommunications crisis may have no way to forward email (though some can act as a local email postoffice, similar to a bulletin board system). However, if an email is uploaded to Ray’s station and instant forwarding to the addressee by the Internet isn’t available, his system will automatically search out a more distant HF station to whom the message can be forwarded. If that station can’t access the Internet, the process continues until the message reaches an area of working Internet, or alternatively until it reaches the designated “message pickup station” for the recipient, who then retrieves it up by radio. The FCC allows this operation in narrow slices of HF amateur bands in the CW/data portions. If the internet exists somewhere, email can be sent to any normal email address, even if that person isn’t even a ham or involved in WINLINK – a perfect EMCOMM system. Email can include any kind of attachment, though small is the order of the day — this is RADIO transmission! Speeds are limited by FCC regulations and available bandwidth.
Ray tested that system by simulating Internet loss, then created an email and watched it get forwarded in minutes out of the state – all automatically. Hooray! Ray is now far more capable of providing backup distant email access for his local EOC in the event of a catastrophe, and is looking forward to doing more local training of other ARES volunteers. He’s also considering funneling more of his existing VHF nodes/gateways back into his HF gateway, and possibly setting up an HF Gateway at his local EOC. The EOC might want to position their gateway on non-amateur, federal frequencies as part of the (hush-hush) SHARES federal version of the same WINLINK digital email system.
Ray’s station makes the third automated HF WINLINK gateway suitable for emergency communications in the North Florida ARRL Section, joining AF4SK in the panhandle, and KX4Z in the Gainesville area. There are only two federal digital SHARES gateways in our state. All told, the entire WINLINK system moves approximately 50,000 message traffic by radio every month. Florida stations are often used by mariners in the Carribean, Gulf and South Atlantic waters, particularly during the calm-water months. His station now appears in the lists of possible gateway stations in free WINLINK user software. (download: ftp://autoupdate.winlink.org/User%20Programs/Winlink_Express_install_1-5-7-0.zip ) It is likely that after his station becomes better known, he’ll move up to handling 100-300 email traffic every month!
