2021-01-21, 19:35:25 (This post was last modified: 2021-01-28, 13:23:53 by VA3KOT John.)
Objective: To develop a technique for reliably transmitting electronic mail over radio.
Purpose: In the event of a localized failure of the Internet an email could be sent by radio to an area where Internet is available and then forwarded through the Internet to its intended destination. Email traffic sent could be text, a spreadsheet or an image.
Introduction: There are three principal methods of sending email traffic over radio in the Amateur Radio Service:
Winlink
PSK Mail
NBEMS (Narrow Band Emergency Message Service)
It is acknowledged that there are other solutions available. For example SailMail (for unlicensed marine operators - based on Winlink) and, in a similar vein, SMS texting over APRS. There is also CW-based Radiograms sent through the National Traffic System. This study confines itself to traffic sent using digital modes over amateur radio frequencies that can be directly ported to the Internet for forwarding using any email client software.
This is an ongoing GBARC club project. Progress will be reported via updates to this post and comments appended to this post. The initial project members are Marvin VE3VCG and John VA3KOT. Team membership is open to any other radio amateurs who do not necessarily need to be members of GBARC. The only qualifications for joining the team are HF capability with a computer/radio interface and a willingness to experiment.
Reports:
[001] 21 January 2021 NBEMS Transport Mechanism Trial
VE3VCG and VA3KOT successfully completed a mid-day NVIS QSO between Paisley, ON and Owen Sound, ON on a frequency of 3.580MHz using PSK-125. The mode was switched to PSK-250 and then to PSK-500. 100% two-way copy was achieved with all three modes. As the data rate increases the connection bandwidth also increases, so it was determined that PSK-125 will be sufficiently fast for the purpose of the trial.
[002] 26 January 2021 ARQ Connect Trial
VE3VCG and VA3KOT reconvened on the air to continue testing. First step: reproduce previous session - FAIL. We could not see each other's signals on the waterfall. Solution: one of the two stations was not transmitting on Upper Sideband! Fixed. Next step: attempt a connection using FLARQ. Just like in the old AX25 packet days, stations can communicate either in connected or unconnected modes. To access an AX25 Bulletin Board the two stations must be connected, but to send unconnected packets to APRS no connection is necessary. The same applies to NBEMS. In order to send and receive email or files the two stations must be connected using the ARQ protocol. Unfortunately, our two stations would not connect. We determined that propagation conditions were too poor for a robust connection. Also, NBEMS does not enforce mode and speed changes to accommodate poor conditions. However, PSKmail does have a more rigorous ARQ connection protocol. Next step: install PSKmail.
[003] 27 January 2021 PSKmail Install
VA3KOT installed the PSKmail Java Client software and successfully tested its ability to use FLDIGI to transmit using PSK-125R mode on a frequency 3588.5KHz. VE3VCG is still working on his installation (while painting his house!). Next step: attempt a client-to-client connection. If successful, attempt a client to server connection. There are very few servers in North America so it may be necessary for one or both of us to install the PSKmail Server software.
This site is a map of active "remote mail servers" .... one on 40m at 200 miles, and 2 on 80 - 400 miles. There are enough servers continent wide to have reliable email. This emergency system is text only, no attachments.
Do we know if any of the systems under experimentation has the ability to interface with Winlink?
Why I ask is that based on the articles in the Mar-Apr and May-Jun TCA by our RAC Community Services Officer, and on the RAC & Red Cross exercise "SMILE2021" posted in this forum by Frank VA3GUF, it is pretty clear that Winlink is the preferred email system for amateur radio support to emergency response, both in the US and Canada.
I've installed & registered the Winlink Express software per Frank's post. I'll originate a message for the SMILE2021 exercise, if I can figure out how to do it. This first effort will be just via the internet, hopefully I can sort out the radio interface later.
2021-05-08, 22:54:28 (This post was last modified: 2021-05-08, 23:01:08 by Tom VA3TS.)
Here's a layout of a typical winlink system set up at a disaster location. A quick overview of the equipment needed. http://www.pigate.net/pigate-rms.html
PiGate RMS is a remote mail server ... takes packets from the field PiGate and forwards them to the global mail link on the internet...
There are three problems with Winlink:
1. RMS/Winlink Express only runs on a MS-Windows system. There is a Linux-based client called "Pat" but I couldn't get it to work.
2. There are insufficient RMS servers and many are poorly maintained (based on personal experience). PiGate won't help unless there are multiple systems running 24/7/365.
3. Email lacks composition discipline. Spelling, grammar and punctuation can alter the intent of a message. For example "Winlink" is a registered trademark. But, in this forum it has also been referred to as "win link". There is an old British army joke about message corruption. Sent: "send reinforcements we're going to advance". Received: "send three and four pence we're going to a dance" (three and fourpence is a reference to money used prior to 1971). Emergencies require precision and for that reason agencies use structured forms.
I dropped Winlink for all of those reasons. NBEMS does not require any proprietary software and it runs seamlessly on VHF and HF without any custom hardware or configuration changes. The NBEMS FLDIGI suite is open source, very powerful and constantly updated. It also runs on any platform. Many different modes and speeds can be used to accomodate different propagation conditions.
NBEMS incorporates all the custom forms used by the NTS, Red Cross and other emergency support organizations. Winlink just sends email.
I contest the view that Winlink is the "preferred" system. NBEMS is widely used in the US. Winlink may be preferred by RAC but IMHO RAC has a poor record of delivering feet-on-the-ground emergency communications. RAC excels only in creating a multi-level structure of emergency managers many of whom are inactive "due to Covid". I should add that I am a RAC member and support their other work.
Now let's analyze what constitutes an "email". Email comprises two components; metadata (header fields; to, from, subject etc) and the message body. For transmission over radio, both the metadata and message body can be combined as in a NTS Radiogram.
The National Traffic System (NTS) carries thousands of messages every day. It can be used to carry messages from a disaster area to another area where infrastructure is intact. Radiogram traffic can be cut and pasted into an Internet email if desired.
So perhaps the pursuit of a solution for email over radio is wrong-headed. We should be looking for a solution for sending accurate messages over radio. It has been commented that someone in a burning building doesn't have time to send a Radiogram. True, but support workers outside the burning building don't have time to send requests for assistance twice because of ambiguity in the first message. Structured message forms enforce composition discipline; email does not.
Being able to send & receive messages during emergency response is a very important capability, and something that should be a club priority. Work seems to going on to harmonize platforms & procedures between various NGOs including Amateur Radio. Read the last few articles by Jason Tremblay in TCA, especially the May-Jun issue. Sounds to me like a major change is coming re what is expected from Amateur Radio by Emerg Mgmt. officials. Maybe we should find out more about where RAC is going, so that our efforts will integrate with others.
73
Dave, VE3WI
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PS: RE WINLINK
I don't really know much about Winlink (or any other such system for that matter), and definitely have no sentimental attachment. I installed Winlink Express just to help out with the Red Cross exercise, and sent & received a couple of emails over the internet. It was easy to set up, basically an email client with some bells & whistles. The exercise was a bust because the organizer sent out the wrong tactical address.
I don't know how to use it with a radio yet, but it appears to be fairly straightforward to connect to my IC-7300 using Ian Snow VA3QT's how-to guide. Ref: https://winlink.org/content/icom_7300761...t_ian_snow. How to actually use it on HF is still somewhat of a mystery so far.
But just to clarify a couple of things:
1. Winlink Express is reported to run well on Linux via Wine, also on Mac. It does not run on the RPi because the code was written for Intel CPUs & hasn't been ported over to ARM. Ref: https://winlink.org/content/installing_w..._and_linux
2. Winlink Express includes >100 emergency message form templates, mostly US but including some Canadian forms. I attached a copy of F-213 used by EMO.
Thanks for the update Dave. Winlink has been an immense source of frustration and failure for me over the last 10 years (even when I tried it with a Windows PC). I would be prepared to take another look at it but I have to smile at the RAC "SMILE" exercise. All it tried, and failed, to achieve was sending an Internet email using a different email client.
Perhaps RAC should have started by encouraging every club to set up an RMS gateway. Winlink is useless unless there is access to the network everywhere seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Ten years ago, when I first investigated Winlink (with Dufferin ARES) the only connection we could rely on was P2P. Our local RMS gateway was highly unreliable.
Meanwhile NBEMS requires no infrastructure, no proprietary software and is rock solid reliable when every participant sets up his station properly. There is even an Android app for sending messages from a smartphone through a radio.
Another consideration is that the use of Pactor sticks in the craw of many hams. There is a complaint that Pactor is a "secrect code or cipher" , prohibited by FCC rules used on amateur frequencies.
Other than that, the solution then is more HF RSS links. Here is some info from Ian VA3QT as an aid to using an ic7300 or 7610 with winlink
WINLINK
Yeah, I see names like PACTOR, ARDOP, VARA, et al, being promoted as alternative Winlink systems. Don't really know what they are, except I did see an ad for a very pricy modem from a company called SCS in Germany, who apparently owns PACTOR & requires a licence fee to use it. Yuk! Don't think I'll spend any more time (or any $$) on this until I see what the standard system will be.
EMERG RESPONSE
I'll just say - once more - that if GBARC is to contribute effectively to emergency response support going forward, we need to integrate with the national project now underway. None of us really know yet where the new "RAC Auxiliary Communications Service" & the new "Emergency Management Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Consortium of Canada (EMNCC)" are going. But it's not hard to predict they want to develop standard protocols so that NGO support to Emergency Managers is consistently provided.
EMNCC has a website but it doesn't have a lot of content yet. It does list the members, 14 including RAC. https://emncc.ca/
The next big opportunity to get involved is likely the next Provincial Emergency Exercise for Bruce Power. This should be in 2022, although COVID might cause a delay. Hopefully by then these committees will have done more than fill binders with meeting minutes, and will have given us some direction so that we can be prepared. In the past only Bruce Co. ARES was involved, but I really think the county-based ARES model is ineffective for Grey & Bruce.
Dave, I agree with the principles you laid down in your last message but I am a nuts-and-bolts, feet-on-the-ground kind of person and when I read https://emncc.ca/ my first thought was that RAC's bureaucracy was being merged into a bigger, multi-party bureaucracy. The website sounds like a corporate mission statement. During my corporate career I had to work with people who would agonize for months over the most powerful wording for the corporate mission statement. Meanwhile, I was working to a P&L quota and could be fired for failing to "meet my numbers". I expect EMNCC will tie itself in knots for years organizing focus groups, stakeholder consultations and environmental reviews before ever doing anything that would be useful in a real emergency. Sorry to sound negative but I spent years wading through all that nonsense.
It would be useful to have an emergency communications system that is standard across Canada but Winlink isn't it. Take a look at the map of RMS channels at: https://winlink.org/RMSChannels. There are none in our area. The closest ones belong to Ian Snow in Barrie. I know Ian; he is a good ham and a dedicated and active ARES volunteer, but we need an Ian Snow in every city in Canada to make it work. It would take years to build an infrastructure of RMS gateways across the country. Some whole provinces have none at all! And then we would have to settle on a technology. Should it be 50 year-old AX.25 with it's 1200 baud limitation; or should it be one of the newer, faster and more efficient modes?
Winlink is a project for licensed hams; other EMNCC agencies won't be able to use it so there won't be a standard across the board. The best we could hope for would be using a common set of forms exchanged over multiple systems.
I posted a thread on these forums several months ago entitled "ARES is dead, let's bury it". It seems RAC is headed in that direction but I am not sure that what replaces ARES will be an improvement. We need lots of hams who are ready, willing and able to get on the air with whatever works right now. If somebody has a practical plan for how to do that with Winlink I am all ears.
John, I have seen lots of the incompetence you describe - both at work and at home (just ask me sometime about the "Community Care Access Center", now morphed into the "Local Health Integration Network").
It is a concern to me that this initiative will become an endless exercise in binder-filling & high sounding communiques with no real direction or support for us and other "boots on the ground" folks who just want to help.
But I am also concerned that GBARC will decide on paths to follow, maybe even buy some hardware, do training, etc., to provide what we think the EMOs need, in the manner we think it's needed - only to find out we're not consistent with whatever protocols have been agreed between the EMOs and the other NGOs.
I believe GBARC's best tactic is to get involved. I'm not sure they would want a flood of individual volunteers at this point, unless they are people with relevant skills & knowledge. On the other hand I'd think a minimal gesture like asking Jason Tremblay "how can we help?" would be entirely appropriate for GBARC.
