so ive been messing with winlink for about three weeks now and i think i have the basic idea down but theres something im clearly missing about how the whole gateway thing actually works. i set up pat on my linux box and got it talking to my IC-7300 through direwolf for packet but i keep having messages just sit there and not go anywhere.

my understanding is that when i connect to an RMS gateway im basically using someone elses node to relay the message up to the CMS servers, and then the recipient either polls for it or their own gateway pushes it to them? or something like that. i get fuzzy on the last mile part.

anyway the actual problem is that i open a session, it connects, i see the handshake happen and then it just disconnects without sending anything. the message is still sitting in outbox. i cant tell if this is a timing issue or if my callsign isnt registered right or what. using VHF packet 1200 baud on 144.990 and i can see the RMS beacon so i know the frequency is right at least. anyone run into this?

yeah that handshake-then-disconnect thing happened to me too when i first set it up, took me forever to figure out. for me it was that my grid square wasnt filled in on the winlink.org account properly and the CMS was rejecting the session silently. like it connects, does the initial exchange, then the server just drops it because something in your account config doesnt match. log into winlink.org and double check everything there, especially that your callsign is verified and the grid square is entered.

also are you running the latest version of pat? there was a weird bug a while back with how it handled the FBB protocol handshake on certain gateway versions and it would just bail out. the direwolf side is probably fine if you can hear the beacon, that part sounds like its working. its almost certainly something on the account or session config side rather than the RF part.

your understanding of the architecture is basically right, its a store and forward system so the message hits an RMS gateway over RF, that gateway forwards it to one of the CMS servers over internet, and then whoever youre sending to either connects to any gateway anywhere in the world and polls the CMS for new mail, or if theyre set up with a Telnet connection they might get it another way. the CMS is really the hub of the whole thing.

for your actual issue though id check the pat logs more carefully, there should be something in there about why the session is terminating early. run it with verbose logging if you can. 144.990 is a common winlink packet freq so that part sounds fine. one other thing -- some gateways are picky about the SSID you connect with, try with and without an SSID and see if that changes anything.