so ive been running a remote station for about two years now, basically a raspberry pi, rigctld, and a web interface I cobbled together from various github projects. works ok but its kind of a pain to maintain especially when something crashes at 2am and i cant figure out if its the audio routing or the hamlib connection or what.

been looking at RemoteHams and their SDR remote stuff lately. the idea of having something more turnkey is appealing but i dunno, feels like you're kind of locked into their ecosystem. anyone running their RCForb client or the SDR side of things for real HF ops? im curious how the latency handling is on weaker signals, like is it actually usable for something like CW or digital modes where timing matters, or is it mostly fine for SSB ragchewing.

also peripherally curious about linking this into some kind of internet linking setup, i have an echolink node on a local 2m repeater and was wondering if there's any overlap or people who've done something interesting connecting the two worlds. probably a dumb idea but it crossed my mind.

ran RCForb for about a year before i went back to a custom setup. the client itself is fine, pretty stable, audio quality was decent once i got the codec settings dialed in. the latency was manageable for SSB, maybe 200-300ms depending on my connection, but CW was rough unless you're already a skilled op who can adapt. i found myself making way more errors just from the feedback delay messing with my timing.

the SDR remote side is a different animal though — if you're doing receive-only or just want to monitor bands that's actually pretty solid. the panadapter updates nicely and you can share access which is handy if you have a club or want to let a buddy check propagation.

the ecosystem lock-in thing is real but honestly its not that bad. my bigger gripe was that when their servers had issues you kind of just had to wait it out, vs my own setup where i could at least dig into what broke. tradeoffs everywhere i guess.

the echolink crossover idea isnt as crazy as you think — ive seen guys do allstar nodes that also tie into remote HF access through a portal so dispatching a signal path across both VHF linking and HF remote in the same session. mostly for emcomm testing but it works. the tricky part is the audio levels and who has control at any given moment gets complicated fast.

for what its worth i just keep my remote setup dead simple, teamviewer into a windows box running the radio's native software. ugly solution but i have had zero unexplained crashes in like 18 months so. sometimes boring is better.