so ive been trying to get Winlink going for a few weeks now and i think im close but the RMS gateway part is tripping me up. i understand the basic concept, you connect to a gateway station, it passes your message to the internet side and the recipient gets it as a normal email. thats fine. but where im getting lost is the actual connection sequence in Winlink Express.

im running a TM-V71A into a Signalink USB on 145.050 which is the closest RMS gateway to me according to the map on the Winlink site. when i try to initiate a session in packet mode it just sits there and never handshakes. ive checked the audio levels like four times and the Signalink is PTT-ing correctly because i can see the TX light on the radio come on. so the radio is transmitting, something is just not connecting.

do i need to configure the gateway call in a specific place in Winlink Express or does it automatically try the closest one? i swear i read somewhere you can set a target station manually but i cant find where that setting is now. also wondering if maybe the gateway i picked is just down or something, is there a status page for individual RMS stations?

yeah the RMS status page is at winlink.org, theres a section called Gateway Status or something similar and you can see when each one last had a successful connection. some gateways that show up on the map are actually down for weeks at a time and nobody takes them off. worth checking before you beat yourself up over the audio config.

for setting the target station manually in Winlink Express, go to Open Session, pick Packet Winlink, and in that window there should be a field where you type the callsign of the gateway you want to hit. you dont have to auto-scan. honestly i always set mine manually once i found a reliable gateway near me because the auto thing would sometimes try stations way out that had terrible paths. also double check your channel config, some gateways run on non-standard frequencies and the map doesnt always make that obvious.

one thing that got me when i first did this -- the Signalink default jumper config might not match what the TM-V71A expects on the data port. theres a couple different ACC jack pinouts depending on what mode you're using. i spent like two days thinking my audio was fine because PTT was working but the actual TX audio path through the data port was wrong. the radio was keying but transmitting silence basically. pulled up a waterfall on another receiver and confirmed it. so yeah id rule that out before assuming the gateway is the problem.