So ive been trying to get Winlink Express working properly for about two weeks now and im losing my mind a little bit. Background: im running a IC-7300 into a SignaLink USB for the audio interface, using Vara HF as the modem. I can connect to some gateways no problem, messages go out, everything looks great. But there are three or four gateways in my region that I keep wanting to use because theyre closer and have better signal paths to me, and those ones just drop the connection partway through the handshake or sometimes right after it starts sending.

I dont know if its a timing issue or my audio levels are off or what. Ive been through the Vara calibration thing and my waterfall looks reasonable. The gateways that work tend to be farther away which makes no sense to me. Also im a little fuzzy on how the RMS relay stuff works when youre not near a gateway — like does it actually store and forward through the network on its own or do I need to configure something on my end for that to happen.

Running Windows 10, current version of Winlink Express and Vara HF 4.7.4 I think. Any ideas welcome because ive been going in circles.

The closer gateways dropping mid-handshake is actually a pretty classic symptom of audio drive issues, weirdly enough. Too much signal into Vara can cause it just as much grief as too little. With the SignaLink you want your TX drive trimmed pretty conservatively — a lot of people crank it up thinking more is better and it just clips everything. Also check if those specific gateways are running an older version of Vara on their end, because there were some compatibility quirks with 4.7.x and certain older installs that got mostly sorted but not totally.

On your store-and-forward question — yeah Winlink handles that automatically through the CMS (the central message servers). You dont have to do anything special. When you connect to any RMS gateway it syncs with the CMS, so it doesnt matter which gateway you hit, your messages are always available. The gateway itself isnt storing them, the CMS cloud thing is. The gateway is really just a radio-to-internet bridge essentially.

had almost the exact same thing happen when i first set mine up, turned out to be a grounding issue between the SignaLink and the radio chassis making the audio path noisy in a way that only showed up on certain signal levels. probably not your problem but worth checking if you havent already. the closer gateways might just be running tighter tolerances or different Vara configs too, some sysops really dial their setups in.