My main purpose in this email is to discuss a new Winlink Post Office mode that I believe is a very important addition to our capabilities. I also want to announce some changes to our Texas RMS Packet / VARA FM Status website and request our Winlink SYSOPS to send me any updates related to their stations for inclusion on this website.
If you are not familiar with this website, it can be found at PacStat Uptime Data
We have 178 stations in the database and 146 were active when I took this screenshot - active stations show up in green. I have removed the column that indicated RMS Relay status and added three columns you can see below within the red circle. Hovering the curser on these abbreviations will give you their full names. Hy stands for Hybrid, PO stands for Post Office and HF stands for HF forwarding. A “Y” in the column indicates that stations supports that capability. My N5TW stations support all three as you can see below. I will say more below about each of these modes…
The new Post Office mode allows depositing mail for other Winlink users with stations that support Post Office Mode. These messages are stored locally and have NO dependency on the Internet. This new mode is MUCH more powerful than sending Peer to Peer traffic. Unlike Peer to Peer where both users must be on the same frequency with the same mode at the same time, Post Office messages can be sent and received when convenient. In my opinion, this new Post Office mode should eliminate most uses of Peer to Peer where this is support for it.
All this requires is running a Winlink Program called RMS Relay and referencing RMS Relay in the Winlink node. My station, for example, does this for three instances of RMS Packet (for VHF Packet and VARA FM) and two instances of RMS Trimode (for PACTOR or VARA HF). This means you can send Post Office traffic to any of my stations whether they are operating on VHF or HF and recipients can pick up there mail from any of my stations - they don’t need to use the same mode.
Below is a screenshot showing how to open a Post Office session - in this case, a Vara FM RMS Post Office session:
It is important that Post Office messages be of the proper type. Below, you can see how to select the proper message type.
Both the sender and the recipient must connect using Post Office sessions to pass traffic.
Hybrid Mode
Let me shift gears to discuss Hybrid Mode which has existed for a number of years. A relatively few of the HF Winlink stations are set up to support Hybrid mode. This is intended as a “Dooms Day” mode with a total internet outage. Users can, in advance, select up to 3 stations as Message Pickup Stations or MPS. Radio only traffic deposited with a Hybrid Station will be routed over HF to the MPS associated for a given user. Please limit the number of MPS stations you register with your call to limit the amount of traffic that has to be handled!!!
I have had stations deposit radio only messages for 20 stations each often with more than 1 MPS - this one piece of traffic could tie the poor hybrid station for a whole day and hog a lot of HF bandwidth! Imagine when this happens on an RTTY contest weekend! Please limit any Radio only traffic!!!
HF Forwarding
The final column if a “Y” for Yes is present, it means that that station is capable of hubbing local traffic for users in an internet outage as well as forwarding traffic outside the area to a station that does have the internet. This is a highly useful feature that has been supported for a quarter century.
In conclusion:
Sorry for the long email but wanted to make sure everyone knows about this new Post Office mode and the changes in the Texas RMS Status webpage. Let’s work to make support for this widespread and to familiarize yourselves with its operation. By the way, I would NOT setup every station in an area as Post Office capable to avoid confusion about where to drop off and pickup mail…
73, Tom N5TW