so ive been trying to get Winlink Express set up for a while now and i keep running into the same wall. i can see the local RMS gateway in the list, it shows up fine, frequency looks right, i set the dial freq in the software and everything but when i actually try to connect it just sits there and then times out. im using a KAM XL for the TNC and its been working fine for regular packet stuff so i dont think thats the issue

my radio is a 706 mk2g and i have it set to 1200 baud, the gateway supposedly accepts 1200 too based on the winlink.org gateway listing. i ran the audio levels through the soundcard stuff in express and they look okay but honestly im not 100% sure what im looking at. the waterfall shows... something when i key up but i dunno if its actually a proper bell 202 tone pair or just noise

has anyone been through this before. is there some obvious thing im missing with the RMS gateway setup or the way express talks to the TNC. feels like im close but just missing one thing

the 706 has a known issue with the ALC hammering the audio when you first key up, especially through the data port. first thing id check is whether your transmit audio path is going through the mic jack or the data/acc jack on the back -- if its going through mic there can be a delay from the internal processing that screws up the handshake timing. the RMS gateway wont wait long for a valid connection burst before it moves on

also worth double checking that express actually has control of the TNC and not some other program fighting for the com port. i had a similar thing where my logging software had the port locked and express would just silently fail. check device manager too, sometimes the KAM shows up on a different COM than you think after a reboot

if you can get someone locally to listen on the gateway freq while you connect you can quickly tell if youre actually putting out anything intelligible. sometimes its just a bad cable or level mismatch and the waterfall in express isnt sensitive enough to catch it

yeah the ALC thing is real, i burned a lot of time on that with my old 746. one other thing -- make sure you have the right mode set on the radio, needs to be USB-D or just USB depending on how your rig labels it. PKT mode on some icom rigs does weird things to the receive audio filtering that can mess up decoding on that end even if your TX looks fine

also when you say the gateway shows up in the list, did you check when it was last heard? sometimes those listings are stale and the gateway is actually down or the sysop changed freq. the RMS channel list in express has a last-heard timestamp if you look at it, anything older than a day or two i'd be skeptical of