My local RACES team is helping to stand up winlink between hospitals in the county. We've succeeeded passing ICS forms during two SET exercises this year. The served hospitals are 20 miles apart separated by terrain that made direct line of sight communication unreliable. We used VARA FM on mobile, portable, and fixed stations in various combinations to test various configurations. We learned a lot from the exercises which involved a mixed bag of win 10/11 computers and various modems (Signalink and Digirig mostly).
Here's a compilation of our lessons learned:
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Windows 11 is moving towards more locked down systems, and seems to adopt a "it just works" design philosophy like apple. Like if you plug a usb sound device in it hasn't seen before, you must want to play tunes through it, so it makes it default, and makes it the current device. 10 did this. But 11 has changed the Settings GUI to make it even harder for us hobby schlubs to bend it to our will.
I had written pages of notes, trying to makes sense of of the new sound settings I finished building a new Win 11 system this week, so I had to make the home Winlink work again. I'd heard about Windows 10/11 "God Mode" while researching the build and decided to look at it. It exposes all of the old-style control panels and settings you'd ever need, and many I'd never heard of. We need this, and it's built into win 10/11 already. We only need to enable it.
Here's a good link to learn more:
Use "Manage Sound Devices" in God Mode to:
Rename your sound device, both input and output, so you can find it.
Turn off AGC
Turn off enhancements
Turn off Spatial Sound
Turn off System Sounds
Set levels
On Input, you can click "Listen" and route it to your speakers to make sure it's working. Also verifies that you've got the right device.
Probably more..
Next, in device manager, use the COM port properties/Advanced/Assign Port number to set a default port number to your PTT com port, to make it obvious when you look. Use a high enough port number to keep it away from the automatically assigned one for headsets, flash drives and the like. Win 11 supports up to 256 USB ports, but VARA only offers up to 16, so I assigned ports 11 and 12 to my two Digirigs. Yes, it can tell them apart.
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We had problems with Windows lost on a virtual desktop that was available at home when we had the laptop at home connected to another monitor. Here's how to fix:
"To move a window that is off screen, hover over its taskbar icon, right click on the window thumbnail, select ¡®Move¡¯ and use the arrow keys to move it. Left click to release it."
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Finally, If you're using a Digirig, by all means go in and cut the jumper to add 20 db of attenuation. It helps a lot to bring all the level settings into midrange.
Great overview for an FT-891 here:
Just the mod:
Don't forget to rename the soundcard side!
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Hope this helps!
73, Jeff KN8A
