This coming Tuesday, January 31 at 7 p.m. at the club site, we’ll have a hands-on session to walk participants through setting up a Winlink 2000 account on their own Raspberry Pi or laptop/desktop computer running Linux.
Winlink is a message-passing system used by mariners, emergency services and hams in general to pass electronic mail even when the internet is inaccessible. Rick K8CAV gave us an overview at the Digital SIG in January and we’re going to build upon that with a hands-on session that will establish your Winlink account and send an initial message via telnet protocol over the internet. Once we’ve succeeded with those goals you will get to take your computer home and fight on your own getting the RF part of the game to work!
For the hands-on session:
Bring your Pi or Linux computer, configured with
- Administrator-access account
- Functioning networking (wired or WiFi will be provided)
- A functioning web browser so we can download some files
- Monitor and keyboard (we will have some to share)
- If you already have an active Winlink account, bring your Winlink password so we can connect to the system.
- If you don’t have a Winlink account yet, that is good – you’ll get a password assigned in the course of the workshop
- If you HAD a Winlink account and haven’t used it for 400 days, your password has probably expired. So go to the winlink.org web site and go through the process to retrieve your password or reactivate your callsign.
- You’ll need access to your personal email account, either on the computer we’re working with or via your phone, so you can confirm your new Winlink account information.
- And you’ll need some patience as we go through this process.
The good news is that Brandon KE8ARB has agreed to be another pair of hands for the hands-on, and that is really great.
We will meet in-person at the club site as well as on Zoom. The Zoom link will be provided in another QST message closer to the event.
Please join us if you can, and 73 de Rick KD8WCK
