So ive been trying to get Winlink working for about two weeks now and i think im close but not quite there. Background: i got my General last year and i mostly do local VHF stuff but the ARES group here keeps talking about Winlink for emcomm exercises and i finally decided to just dive in.

I installed Winlink Express and got the Vara FM trial running. I can see RMS gateways on the frequency list thing in the program and i can actually connect to one of them — or at least it looks like it connects, shows the handshake or whatever — but then when i compose a message and try to send it nothing actually shows up in my sent folder and the other person never gets anything. I dont know if the message is getting stuck somewhere or if im doing something wrong with the addressing.

Also confused about the difference between RMS relay and RMS gateway. The docs kind of explain it but not in a way that clicks for me. Is the gateway just the node i connect to over RF and then it handles getting the message to the internet side? And do i need to have an internet connection myself for any of this or is the whole point that i dont need one?

Running an IC-9700 into a Arrow dual band yagi if that matters. The gateway im trying to hit is maybe 15 miles out, should be totally workable.

Yeah the RMS gateway is basically exactly what you described — it's the node you hit over RF and it bridges to the Winlink CMS servers on the internet side. You don't need your own internet connection, that's kind of the whole point for emergency use. The gateway operator has the internet connection and your message hops through them to the central message store.

The sent folder thing is a little confusing in Winlink Express because messages dont move to sent until the transfer actually completes cleanly. If the session drops partway through or something goes wrong during the posting phase it can just kind of sit there. Open the session log after you try — there should be a log window or check the logs folder in the Winlink Express directory — and look for any error codes. Common one i see is when the gateway is connecting fine on the RF side but the CMS post is timing out, which usually means the gateway itself has an internet issue at that moment.

Also double check your callsign is entered correctly in Winlink Express settings, including if you have a SSID suffix. That trips people up more than you'd think.

i went through pretty much the same frustration a while back. one thing that got me was i was trying to connect during a time when that particular gateway was apparently down or the sysop hadnt updated it in a while — the frequency list in the program doesnt always reflect real-time status. there's a map on the winlink.org site where you can see which gateways have been active recently, worth checking that before you spend an hour trying to hit a node that nobody's maintained since 2021 lol

with a 9700 and a yagi at 15 miles you should have zero problem getting through on Vara FM once the basic config is right