so ive been trying to get Winlink working for a few weeks now and i think i understand the basics but the whole gateway vs direct thing is still tripping me up. like i get that you connect to an RMS gateway and it forwards your email to the internet-side CMS servers, but i dont fully understand what happens when the RMS you're hitting isnt responding or is busy. does it just queue locally on your end or does Winlink Express handle that automatically?

also im running a Vara FM setup right now on 2m through a local gateway about 12 miles away and it works most of the time but sometimes the connection just drops halfway through sending and i end up with no idea if the message actually went out or got stuck somewhere. i checked the session log and it says disconnected but the message isnt in my outbox anymore so i think it got through? this is the part that confuses me. is there a way to confirm delivery short of the other person telling you they got it?

background: i got my general a while back and im doing some ARES stuff so i want to get comfortable with this before we actually need it in an emergency. running a TM-V71A into a SignaLink-ish setup, well actually a Digirig, into a laptop. works decent enough but yeah the dropped sessions thing is annoying

the queuing thing — yeah Winlink Express holds the message in your outbox until it gets a confirmed handshake from the RMS that the session completed. if the session drops before that happens the message stays in outbox and you can just try again. the CMS side doesnt get it until the RMS actually uploads it, so if you see it gone from outbox it almost certainly made it. almost. there have been edge cases where the session partially completed but that's pretty rare with Vara FM, more of a Pactor thing back in the day.

for delivery confirmation there's no read receipt in the traditional sense but if you send to a winlink address you can request a delivery notification in the message settings, theres a checkbox somewhere in the compose window. wont help for sending to a regular email address though, those you just have to trust the system or ask the recipient.

also for your dropped sessions on 2m, have you checked what the gateway's queue looks like? sometimes if a bunch of people are hitting the same RMS it'll time you out. Vara FM is pretty sensitive to audio levels too, worth running the Vara FM calibration if you havent already. the Digirig should be fine but the level coming out of the radio into it matters a lot more than people think.

went through basically the same confusion when I started doing emcomm stuff with my group. one thing that helped me was just watching the Winlink Express session log in real time while a transfer happens — you can actually see the handshake steps go back and forth and it becomes pretty obvious when something fails versus when it completes cleanly. sounds dumb but just watching it for a few sessions made the whole RMS/CMS relationship click for me.

the TM-V71A should work fine for this, ive seen people run solid Vara FM with that radio. one gotcha is making sure youre not accidentally keying up on the input of a repeater instead of the simplex gateway frequency, i did that embarassingly for like two weeks before someone told me