Email Over Radio, Built In
Winlink moves email over radio with no internet. The station runs it and the console wraps it, so you can read and send from the dashboard, and a field report from the mesh can go out as formal radio email.
Overview
Winlink is email that travels over radio. No internet, no cell, just the radio and a network of stations that pass the mail along. For emergency and off-grid work it is one of the most useful tools a station can have, so it is built into this one.
How it fits in
The station runs a Winlink client on the Pi, and the console wraps it. From the dashboard you can see mailbox status, read incoming and sent messages, compose a new one to the outbox, and start a connection to move the mail. It is the same client underneath, with a station-console front end over it rather than a separate app in its own window.
The point of wrapping it was not to reinvent Winlink. It was to put it in the same place as everything else, so email over radio is one page on the console instead of one more thing to go run.
The useful part: a field report becomes radio email
The piece that ties it to the rest of the station is the situation report. Send a short report command from a handheld on the mesh, and the gateway writes it into the Winlink outbox and sends it. A line of text from a radio in the field goes out as a formal message over radio, with no internet anywhere in the chain.
That is the whole case for an integrated station. The mesh gives you the short, cheap link from the field. Winlink gives you the formal, long-haul message path. Wiring them together means a field operator can file a real report with nothing but the handheld in their hand.
Lessons
- Wrap the proven tool, do not rebuild it. The Winlink client is mature. The value was integration, not reimplementation.
- The link between tools is the feature. Mesh alone is short messages. Winlink alone is formal mail. The bridge from one to the other is what makes the station more than the sum of its parts.