Thanks to WJ9H, Tom for assisting with this test.
Scenario: A major earthquake event has taken out all local Winlink RMS servers, Digipeaters and internet is down at all locations. HF capabilities are very limited, searching for a reachable Winlink RMS is taking too much time.
Using VARAC:
Impacted station sends broadcast message request for a Winlink Relay, frequency specified up 6KC (clear). Connection BW of 2300 requested.
Relay station (out of impacted area) set up as follows:
a) PC running VARAC(V6.4.15) ,VARA 500,2300, interface to HF transceiver
b) Internet/Wifi capable. Internet is operational at this location
c) Same PC running Winlink Express with "Winlink Telnet" Session selected
3. Relay station receives broadcast and connects with impacted station using VARA 2300, specified clear frequency
4. Impacted station sends brief description of situation and sends relay station a Vmail with emergency traffic and contact email address.
5. Relay station cut and pastes email address and message traffic into Winlink Express "New Message" from Vmail. Post to winlink "Outbox".
6. Relay "Starts session" using Telnet Winlink and email is sent.
7. Relay station acknowledges receipt of Vmail and that message was sent via Winlink Telnet session back to Impacted Station.
Tom, WJ9H sent a Broadcast "CQ" message with 2300 specified and up frequency. I answered his CQ and along with a nice QSO, we performed the steps as outlined above; Tom was the impacted station in WI and I acted as the relay station in WA state. All worked well. This was a simple and very manual example, but showed how the VARAC and Winlink Express current releases could be used. There are several advantages I see:
Using the VARAC Broadcast feature, impacted stations in need of sending emergency traffic can quickly connect with relay stations out of the impacted area with internet access and winlink capability.
While Winlink Express provides a list of available RMS servers, it takes time to go through the list and find an RMS that you can connect to. I have several HF RMS's I test regularly on 80M, 40M and 20M, but at times connectivity is not possible. I see using VARAC broadcast as a viable backup strategy.
One option with Winlink is to connect to a hybrid RMS that will queue up your traffic and send it when it can, using a "Post Office Box" that is set up prior to the event. This works, particularly if the station is local, but lost internet connectivity. The hybrid RMS will hold the message until it can connect with another RMS (HF or VHF) or the internet comes back. This is fine, but your emergency traffic can take hours or even days to be sent. Your never really sure when the message actually is delivered. With this approach, the VARAC relay station can acknowledge the emergency traffic was actually sent via VARAC chat at the completion of relay session.
This test was only meant to be a proof of concept. Providing a less manual way to connect at VARA 2300, send the Vmail emergency traffic message to WInlink Express, post to outbox and send via Winlink Telnet/VHF/HF needs lots of thought. It was interesting to try this and challenging to think about how this could possibly provide another way for stations to connect using VARA 2300 and send emergency traffic.
Please, feel free to throw darts at this, add your ideas, comments.
73,
Brian
K7RUt
AEC Pierce County ARES, Central Team
Anderson Island, Wa
An idea I would love to see in Winlink: calling freqs/beacons similar to VarAC. Waste so much time and battery in the field trying to find a gateway. If there were beacon freqs one could simply hear a gateway and I suppose beacon could also contain op freqs though that could be cumbersome. In any event Winlink to me is good for stationary base stations who can build up a list of favorites they reliably contact but even then much time and power is wasted trying to make connections IMO. Thx to the developer of VarAC it is a really great program and covers a lot of bases I appreciate. Very very well done. Kudos.
As I read the through the comments, the meta-question being posed here is, 'how might VarAC and WinLink be integrated to solve for moving ICS-compliant traffic in a total grid-down scenario?' Kudos to K7RUT for noodling on the idea!
I agree with Bret-N4BTA's suggestion to use VarAC in parallel with Winlink to broadcast/beacon WinLink capabilities, rather than integrating via software.
Stated another way, use VarAC for what it's good for, and use Winlink for what it's good for.
For VarAC to be accepted by local, state, and federal agencies for message passing, VarAC would have to implement and maintain all of the message features of WinLink. That's a LOT of parallel effort, and not very value-add IMHO. The issue isn't just that there are technical challenges, there are issues around message authenticity, integrity, legal authority, message chain of custody to name a few. (I work for a state emergency management agency. EVERYTHING must be documented and in compliance. Messages sent by WinLink become legal documents and 'evidence'.)
The beauty of Bret's suggestion is the simplicity and the fact it can be implemented without having to write software. It does however require a standard operating procedure (SOP) to define standard frequencies and operating practices - at least at the local/regional level.
In the context of EmComm, I think of VarAC as the tool to 'broadcast status and capabilities' and WinLink as the tool for fomal message passing.
One capability that might make sense to implement in VarAC is a light weight Automatic Link Establishment-like (ALE) feature that would scan and 'sound' across a list of preestablished frequencies (i.e., NETS) similiar to what's implemented in ALE 2G/3G. More on this in a different thread.
-Grant, W7GTM
ARES AEC
WA EMD
To me , the simpler solution is to use VarAC or VARA Chat broadcast to find and set up the relay station, and then use Winlink P2P to pass the message. Then all of the functionality of WL2K Express is available and the traffic is already in Winlink format. Relay station only has to pass the traffic using Winlink, not convert data from VarAC to WL2K. No chance of Relay making a mistake in translation. The originator can even lock the message from being edited before sending. Originator and relay can do any followup handshaking on WL2K P2P before moving back to VarAC or VARA Chat to listen for more broadcasts.
KISS Engineering concept,
Bret Arnold
N4BTA / GA ARES
NNA4BA / CISA SHARES
Hi everybody, working for Doctors without borders as tehnical logistician, in emergency situation we use immarsat or others expensive satellite system. It will be a good idea to implement the link between winlink and varac especially the email function. A gateway will be great and it will be good to test it monthly to be sure that when disaster strike we are ready...I am also using winlink and in South africa we have 2 active stations which i test regurarly. Thanks to Irad to think about it, and bravo for his great software. JLouis ZS6AAG
All very interesting, I think that in an emergency situation everything must be reduced to the simple, to the indispensable, for this I look forward to Irad introducing the Gateway function towards any accessed POP, so everything would be reduced to a single program to manage (like the old Airmail3).
Some additional thoughts on a VARAC relay station for emergency traffic:
The relay station being "Winlink Capable" enables usage of the ICS standard forms, such as the ICS-213, general message. Taking the vmail raw traffic and formatting it to the ICS-213 enables the traffic to be sent to an Emergency Management Entity in the ICS format and most importantly, tracking the traffic using the Winlink message number. This traffic could be sent by the relay via internet using Winlink Telnet or to a local RMS via UHF/VHF. Both are very reliable ways to send the ICS formatted emergency message text.
Another need in an emergency is for impacted area local residents to be able to contact their out of area emergency contact, to provide family and friends with their status in the case internet and cell phone is not operational. In this case, the relay station could send an email using a standard email client and free form format text for the family member recipient. Family getting confirmation that their loved ones are OK can be a huge relief to all impacted community members and their out of area contacts.
There are cases where the out of impacted area contact will not have access to email. Our local community on the island as a high number of older residence who have no email or internet access. While we encourage everyone to get an email, some are not interested. In this case (and there may be others) the relay station could deliver the emergency traffic received via the Vmail capability and relay the message via cell phone.
Using the broadcast message to specify an offset frequency for 2300 BW connections will be an important option. Speeding up the delivery of emergency traffic can save lives when time is critical. Establishing standard offsets for 2300 would be helpful. 3 kHz above slot 15 for example. Taking into account band plans and minimizing impact to other comm modes would be desired.
Great!
Thank you. sounds like a great practice :) I will be happy to hear more about your experiments as it can help me think about features the EmComm world needs. 73s!