so ive been trying to get Winlink going for a few weeks now and i think i finally understand most of it but the gateway stuff is still tripping me up. running Winlink Express on a windows 10 box, got a Signalink USB hooked to a Kenwood TM-V71A on 2m. the radio connects fine to the local RMS gateway i can see it in the gateway list and it shows within range. i did get one successful message through like two weeks ago but since then nothing goes through and i cant figure out if its my end or the gateway.

what im confused about is the difference between an RMS relay and a regular RMS gateway. like the documentation kind of explains it but then also doesnt. is a relay just for when theres no internet on the gateway side? i thought all the gateways had to be internet connected to forward to the CMS anyway. also when i set up a session it just sits there saying waiting for channel activity and never connects. ive tried at a few different times of day. the squelch is open on the gateway frequency and i can see the little VARA FM or packet activity light blinking on the gateway side when others connect. so it seems like the gateway is fine.

should i be worried about my audio levels? the Signalink is set pretty much out of the box, i bumped the TX knob up a tiny bit. running Winlink Express with VARA FM, not packet, maybe thats an issue. someone in my club said VARA FM needs the full licensed version to do anything useful but i thought the free version still works just slower. any thoughts appreciated, this is driving me a little nuts

the VARA FM free version definitely still works, it just caps your connection speed. for local 2m gateway connections thats usually fine unless the gateway is busy and drops slower connections which some do. so that probably isnt your problem.

the audio levels are almost always the culprit when someone says it worked once and then stopped. with the Signalink the TX knob is super sensitive and if you bumped it up you might actually be overdriving the radio. what does your ALC look like when youre transmitting? if the ALC is pegging you need to back off. the sweet spot is usually lower than you think, barely any ALC movement. also check that your Kenwood isnt doing any mic gain processing on the data port, some radios have settings for that that mess with digital modes.

as for RMS relay vs gateway, youre basically right. a relay is an intermediate node for when you need to reach a gateway and cant do it directly, like in a terrain challenged area. for your use case just connecting to a local gateway that has internet you dont need to think about relays at all.

yeah what he said about the ALC, that got me for like a month when i first set up my winlink station. also one thing to check -- make sure Winlink Express actually has the right soundcard selected. i had mine randomly switch to the built in laptop audio after a windows update and it took me embarassingly long to figure out why nothing was getting out. you can test it by just doing a channel opening and watching if anything is actually transmitting on the waterfall in VARA, if you dont see your own signal going out then its a software audio routing thing not a radio thing