I live in upstate New York, I have a general class license, and this is my first time using Lemmy (or any federated social for that matter).
My mobile rig is a VR-N7500 “50W” VHF/UHF. It uses Bluetooth control from my phone, and it does APRS.
My QTH rig is a Xiegu G90 on a 40m EFHW powered by micro solar. I mainly do FT8, as well as a little VARA HF WinLink. (I’m a bit mic shy and my antenna setup isn’t that great.)
I’m interested in POTA (and maybe SOTA).
Hope to meet some friendly folk!
How do you do the VARA WinLink? It is something I am interested in playing with on VHF and HF. I think the X6100 can do it natively, but I have a digirig device for VHF.
Personally I use a DigiRig with my G90. Laptop running WinLink Express<->VARA HF<->DigiRig<->Cables<->G90
I have heard of the X6100 running FT8 natively. I’m sure it could run some version of WinLink, but I’m not sure if it could do VARA specifically. Last I knew VARA (the modem itself) was Windows only.
If the X6100 uses x86, you could probably just use WINE. If it’s something like ARM, you’d need WINE inside an emulator.
I imagine there’s other options too, like packet/ARDOP/etc.
I have personally never done WinLink over VHF/UHF, although it is a goal of mine someday. (Doesn’t help that the nearest VHF/UHF nodes to me presently are at least 30 miles away.)
Do you have any specific questions, I’d be happy to help anytime!
Yeah I used natively wrong. I meant without needing something like a digirig in the middle. Connected directly to the computer.
I actually managed VHF Winlink using the digirif and a baofeng, but man it was unreliable. Going to try it with my mobile QYT KT908Plus and see if its any better.
I would love to use my linux chromebook and the X6100 box to make a mobile packet station, but im not really sure where to start.
If you have a Linux distro installed, you could install Pat. It’s an email client. It works with some of WinLinks stuff, if I remember correctly.
I used PAT for my VHF winlink. I like it!
If the X6100 runs Linux, it’s possible you could install Pat onto it!
I’ve seen people override the firmware and install linux on the X6100, but I am hesitant to do that with such an expensive radio.
Fair enough!
Still an interesting idea for possible future endeavors.