Paul Jackson

so ive been trying to get Winlink working for a few weeks now and i think i understand the basics but the whole gateway vs direct thing is still tripping me up. like i get that you connect to an RMS gateway and it forwards your email to the internet-side CMS servers, but i dont fully understand what happens when the RMS you're hitting isnt responding or is busy. does it just queue locally on your end or does Winlink Express handle that automatically?
also im running a Vara FM setup right now on 2m through a local gateway about 12 miles away and it works most of the time but sometimes the connection just drops halfway through sending and i end up with no idea if the message actually went out or got stuck somewhere. i checked the session log and it says disconnected but the message isnt in my outbox anymore so i think it got through? this is the part that confuses me. is there a way to confirm delivery short of the other person telling you they got it?
background: i got my general a while back and im doing some ARES stuff so i want to get comfortable with this before we actually need it in an emergency. running a TM-V71A into a SignaLink-ish setup, well actually a Digirig, into a laptop. works decent enough but yeah the dropped sessions thing is annoying

same boat as you were a few months ago lol. i just focused on WAS first because it felt more manageable and i was mostly on 40m anyway. got it confirmed on lotw in about 5 months, which i was pretty happy with. DXCC took longer but once you hit like 50 entities it kind of gets addictive and you start actually paying attention to which zones you're missing for WAZ too. they all kind of overlap once you get going

went through exactly this about two years ago and the honest answer is yeah it is better but how much better depends a lot on what you're doing. for weak signal stuff and crowded bands the dynamic range improvement on the RSP1A is real, you stop getting as many intermod artifacts when there's strong broadcast stations nearby. the 12-bit ADC vs 8-bit in the rtl dongles does matter especially on HF where you've got huge signals sitting next to tiny ones
that said your antenna is probably the bigger issue right now. a 30 foot random wire with a 9:1 is fine but it's not great for anything below maybe 10 mhz. if you fixed the antenna and kept the rtl you might actually get more improvement than going RSP1A with the same wire. i'd probably do antenna first then think about the SDR upgrade but if you want to just try the RSP1A the SDRuno software that comes with it is actually pretty solid now, used to be kind of a mess but they've cleaned it up

CB crystal for the LO is a bit of a gamble on 40m depending on exactly where you land, but shouldnt cause the audio quality thing by itself. id vote power supply first, switching supplies and homebrew analog stuff just dont play nice and its the cheapest thing to rule out. battery test takes 30 seconds.

yeah what he said about NATO being the standard is right. i actually got corrected on this early on when i used "sugar" for S and the net control politely told me to use sierra lol. felt embarrassing at the time but honestly glad they said something
one thing i'll add is some of the older timers on certain nets still use the old "able baker charlie" phonetics from before NATO standardized everything and it can throw you off if you arent expecting it. doesnt come up much but worth knowing it exists

the Sudden is a great starting point, built one years ago. one thing i ran into was RF getting back into the audio through the volume pot, had to add a small cap from the wiper to ground to kill it. might not be exactly your problem but worth a shot, took me forever to figure that one out and it was like a 5 cent fix.

the Sudden is a great starting point, built one years ago. one thing i ran into was RF getting back into the audio through the volume pot, had to add a small cap from the wiper to ground to kill it. might not be exactly your problem but worth a shot, took me forever to figure that one out and it was like a 5 cent fix.

so ive been working on a simple direct conversion SSB transmitter for 40m, nothing fancy, based loosely on the BITX design but with some mods because i couldnt source a few of the original parts locally and ended up substituting. the RF output looks okay on the scope but when i pipe audio in from my mic preamp the output sounds really muddy, almost like theres a low frequency oscillation riding on top of everything. ive checked the balanced modulator and the carrier null looks good, maybe 40dB down. the audio stage itself sounds clean going in.
im thinking maybe its the VFO coupling or possibly something in the driver stage picking up the audio line, i ran the wiring kind of sloppy on the first build. anyone dealt with something like this on a homebrew rig where the audio path is getting into the RF chain in a weird way? i cant figure out if its feedback through the power supply rail or actual physical coupling. the whole thing is point to point on a piece of copper clad, no ground plane under the audio section which in retrospect was probably a dumb idea

i went through exactly this debate last year and ended up doing a hybrid thing where i set up the second radio just for receive monitoring during runs. wasnt doing true SO2R transmit switching or anything, just had the second rig on headphones in one ear so i could hear whats happening on 15 while im running 20. felt like cheating honestly, rate went up noticeably in the CQWW because i could flip over and grab a run frequency on 15 when conditions shifted instead of losing 10 minutes hunting around blind.
full SO2R with interlock and all that, i dont know, seems like it takes a while before the technique becomes natural enough that you're not actually hurting your rate by fumbling the switch timing. might get there eventually but im not there yet