Bimini Babe 0 Posted April 22, 2012 Share Posted April 22, 2012 I'm tearing my hair out... again! I've got the SSB set up on the boat, and have been told about WinLink, WINMOR, Airmail etc by some other cruisers... e.g. getting weatherfax & sending email without a Pactor modem. But I can't figure out how to set it up - I don't even know what other hardware I need, if any. There doesn't seem to be any sort of 'idiot's guide' to WinLink/Airmail. Can anyone offer advice in plain English please? Everything I've found so far is completely incomprehensible! Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted April 22, 2012 Share Posted April 22, 2012 Winlink and Airmail are the "front ends" that let you create and read e-mails, request and receive GRIBs, WX, weather faxes etc. WINMOR and Pactor modems are the middle bits that sit between your computer and the SSB radio. A Pactor modem is a hardware device with cables to the computer and also to the SSB, whereas WINMOR is a software piece that sits on your computer and does a broadly similar job to the Pactor hardware. As far as I know WINMOR is only available for use with Winlink at present, and you need to be a licensed Ham to use Winlink. Airmail is the same software but configured to work with commercial services such as Sailmail. Winlink is free to use and unlimited (but cannot be used for business or commercial e-mails). Sailmail is US$250 per annum and limited to a certain amount of time per week. You need to be reasonably technical to get WINMOR to work. There is an intro at the following link: http://www.winlink.org/winmor There are many steps to getting your e-mail over SSB working properly and at the fastest possible speeds. The SSB setup is the first and while you may be able to transmit and receive voice locally OK, there are many little glitches that will kill the performance of Pactor or WINMOR. For example, you need ferrite noise and spike protectors on your cables between the PC and the SSB (the USB cable, the modem cables etc) otherwise tiny interference spikes coming from the huge power bursts from the SSB will lock up the USB port or even reboot your computer. To be honest, unless you are technical I think a couple of hours with a technician who knows these setups is a good investment. If you look at the back of the Airmail PDF manual it lists installers all round the world including several in Auckland and NZ. These guys know the issues and it will only cost you a couple of hundred dollars compared to days and days of frustration. If you want to go the WINMOR route, and very first step is to try and get setup to receive weather fax files to your PC from the SSB. This is a well worn route that uses the PC sound card to covert the fax signals to a visible image using a bit of simple software on the PC. This has been done for years and is nothing to do with Winmor or Pactor and is pretty easy to do with no technical knowledge. If you search you will find many articles on how to do this and all it requires is a single shielded cable from the SSB to the sound jack on the PC, and a little bit of free software. Get that working, then think about WINMOR. It will iron out some of the basic issues with your setup. Good luck! Link to post Share on other sites
darkside 61 Posted April 22, 2012 Share Posted April 22, 2012 Help is also available from the visiting offshore sailors. In my experience the North American boats all have these links well sorted out and are happy to help For sailmail the newer versions of Pactor are much faster than I and II. We found sailmail very good after we had our SSB "opened" to recieve all the frequencies they use Link to post Share on other sites
Bimini Babe 0 Posted April 22, 2012 Author Share Posted April 22, 2012 Awesome, thank you. So I guess Winlink is out for me anyway, as I'm not a licensed Ham user? I'm only licensed for marine HF use (i.e. the NZ 'MROC' qualification). I do have Xaxero Weather Fax 2000 program and hardware (basically a headphone-to-USB cable), so I assume I should still be able to get that going on my own? I also wondered if the same cable would potentially do the job for Winlink too... but I guess I'd need to look into Ham licensing first? Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 I do have Xaxero Weather Fax 2000 program and hardware (basically a headphone-to-USB cable), so I assume I should still be able to get that going on my own? I figured it out easy, just have to wait about 15 min for it to display fully on laptop. Link to post Share on other sites
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