so ive been going back and forth on this for a few months now. my main station is at a rural property about 90 miles away and driving out there every weekend is getting old fast. been looking at RemoteHams and also at just setting up a raspberry pi with something like KiwiSDR or a proper SDR setup and doing the internet linking myself through something like Hamlib and a VPN tunnel.

the thing is im not sure if RemoteHams is worth the subscription cost when i already have a decent understanding of linux networking. but then again ive heard the audio latency on their platform is actually pretty well optimized compared to just throwing VNC at the problem, which is what i tried first and was absolutely unusable above like 20wpm on CW. the PTT lag alone was making me crazy.

does anyone here actually run remote ops as their primary way of getting on the air? curious if youre using RemoteHams, something SDR-based like an RSP or a KiwiSDR node, or fully custom. and how does it hold up on HF when band conditions are already marginal - does the latency make weak signal stuff basically impossible or is it workable?

been running remote for about two years now through RemoteHams with an IC-7300 at the home QTH while im usually at work or traveling. honestly the latency isnt bad at all for SSB and even CW once you get used to it - i run it over a decent cable connection on both ends and the PTT delay is maybe 150-200ms which you do notice but you adjust. weak signal stuff on 40 and 80 at night works fine for me, ive made plenty of 579 contacts that wouldve been marginal even sitting at the rig. the bigger issue ive had is audio dropouts when my ISP has a hiccup, it just destroys a QSO mid-sentence and theres no graceful recovery, the other station just hears garbled junk.

the SDR remote path is interesting and i messed around with a KiwiSDR node for a while - great for receive-only monitoring, like if you want to just listen to a DX pileup before you try to get in. but for actually transmitting youre still dealing with the same latency issues plus now you have to manage the TX side separately which gets complicated fast. if youre comfortable with linux networking honestly rolling your own might be more satisfying, just budget some serious time for it.

i tried the DIY VPN route too and yeah VNC is just completely wrong tool for this, gave up on that pretty quick. what actually worked better for me was flrig over the network combined with fldigi and just accepting that real-time voice wasnt really the goal - i mostly do digital modes remotely so the latency matters way less. for PSK31 or JS8Call it doesnt really matter if theres a half second of lag, the software handles it. if youre trying to do phone or CW contesting remotely that seems genuinely hard no matter what platform you use, theres always gonna be that slight weirdness.