Anybody know how to design nice looking forms like WinLink Express has? Red Cross got all their special forms (some unique, some tweaked from ICS stuff) with their logo, etc. into WinLink. My suspicion is the WinLink people continue to try to push their system for emcomm and building nice forms for a major served agency helps serve their purpose. In an exercise some months ago with ARC, some of the forms were kind of ported to FLDigi for use by the PA ARES groups, who are FLDigi (not WinLink) groups. In the most recent exercise, this was not going to be allowed and it was 100 percent WinLink (and the nice forms). Here in our area, we have focused on D-Rats for emcomm (we have no WinLink VHF/UHF RMS around here, as is the case in most places) but the forms section of D-Rats is rudimentary at best. Served agencies seem to want info but on their own form, too. I know this is xml stuff, but if anybody has delved into this and possibly how to convert forms from those already fabricated in WinLink Express or FLDigi, that would be a strong point for the D-Rats group here.?

Unless I am missing something, using D-Rats with internet email relay is at least as powerful as WinLink without the necessity of an RMS. The only drawback to D-Rats is lack of the nice customized forms WinLink Express has. Thanks.

Indeed. Before he passed away, we managed to get WN3LIF excited about D-Rats. We used it for the last Red Cross national drill (this recent one was only WinLink). WinLiink has quite the political lobby at ARC and ARRL. For the record, I am in the camp that thinks it should be strictly regulated on HF bands, but see zero issue with it on UHF/VHF. However, you need RMS nodes and we have zero. In those areas that have VHF (mainly) RMS, then fine, but these are very, very limited areas. And hybrid WinLink (no internet required) is pretty much the equivalent of fighting a California wild fire with a garden hose. I know why they came up with hybrid, but in actual use it needs the same RMS station and HF frequency as everyone else is trying to use at the same time, so it only compounds the HF WinLink throughput bottleneck. Combine that with the complete lack of prioritizing traffic on WinLink and you have an emcomm mess.?
What I was hoping to attract with my post was the attention of somebody who knows how this xml and style sheet stuff works who can create a nice form repository for D-Rats like somebody did for WinLink.?

We cut/paste stuff into "Knowledge Center" up here for Lehigh County. That's a no-frills text thing (for those not familiar this is a web-based emergency message system bridging a lot of agencies in PA and other states). Our EOC doesn't really care about pretty fonts or logos but I think Red Cross was impressed by their fancy forms. I don't think they are hard to make if you know how. Folks like web page developers know this stuff. Anybody??
BTW....I added your Skywarn form to my D-Rats install. Nice.?

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The forms in Winlink are HTML.? They use the server in RMS Express to create an XML file that is sent with the email.? D-RATS used to do something similar, but the forms weren't HTML.? It was very difficult to create new forms, having created several.? Doing an HTML form and building a server into D-RATS to do the same thing that RMS Express is doing would be a good thing.? I wish I had more time to help this project.? It would be fun.?

Thanks

David, AC7DS

Thanks. I am holding out hope that some tech guy who does web sites is also a D-Rats fan and knows how to do this stuff. WinLink seems to have a political action group that converted a bunch o the Red Cross forms for FLDigi as well as designing really nice ARC forms with the logo, etc. It's all window dressing to appeal to Red Cross, which has certainly worked so far. Although their current national exercise (Nov 14) uses A LOT of Telnet, which is a real head scratcher for emcomm. If the internet is working on both ends, just use email...no need for ham radio.?

Michael - I am a D-rats enthusiast and have been working with the application as well as Winlink.? Both have their place in Emcomm with Winlink being the premier application.? If you learn more about Winlink you will find that it is not exclusively tied to Red Cross.? Anyone can generate a form that can be used to send specific types of reports to a served agency.??

At Texas State RACES, the Texas Dev. of Emergency Management uses the State of Texas STAR form to request assets and other needs that are requested by a local or other governmental incident participant. The STAR form and dozens of other forms have been constructed by any amateur operator will to put the form together.

The power of Winlink is to be able to send and receive text messages over a wide range of real-world Emcomm environments regardless of network availability. Please review the capability of Winlink before casting doubts to others about its viability.

Roy Walker
WA5YZD
Austin, Texas

I am extremely familiar with WinLink. Basically, WinLink is adequate for some emcomm where there are VHF (or UHF) RMS stations within reach, preferably more than one. Where there are not (the vast majority of places) WinLink can't come close to being an emcomm mode. Have you participated in an ARC drill attempting to use HF WInLink? Good luck. I have. It bogs down immediately. How do you prioritize traffic for transmissioin (not handling, transmission...like any real emcomm mode)? If there is any precedence before transmitting, I've never seen it. So low priority traffic can tie up the system while priority traffic attempts to connect.?
And, coming from years of Army MARS, I can tell you WinLink absolutely depends upon the internet to work. If your RMS can't connect to AWS (formerly CMS), it can, in theory, default to the "hybrid network". IF your mail handling stations are setup in advance. Let's look at what happens in the hybrid scenario....mail uses the same RF backbone of RMS stations to hop a message to your desired pickup station. An already overloaded system is now jammed with backhaul messages too. No, sorry, WinLink is fine for LIMITED traffic on HF, heavier traffic on VHF and only when your local node has internet. Emcomm in most situations we drill for (I am an EC) is local. D--Rats and actually FLDigi are both superior for local ops. I've used them all extensively.?
My feeling is "served agencies" like the appeal of WinLink because they can use their desktop computer to receive and reply to stuff from the field. Other methods require some kind of bridge into their system. Locally here in PA, we don't even use email for emcomm....we copy and paste stuff into a web portal used all over called "Knowledge Center" (also some other states use this. A kind of email is built in. It certainly requires internet, but so does email. FLDigi and D-Rats do not.?
As Patrick said, D-Rats does a fair job of replacing WinLink in an area (like mine) with no local WinLink VHF stations. The shortcomings are lack of an address book in the email program, lack of ability to reply from email to a field station (without some effort).?

Most of the ARC drills where they are sending a lot of forms make substantial use of WinLink Express Telnet. I've also been involved in that. That's not even radio at any stage.?

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Jim:
?D-Rats is not alone in an emcomm solution that, in a real-world high-intensity operation, is superior to WinLink in throughput. FLDigi (and the associated programs like FLAMP, FLMSG, etc) both work. D-Rats allows a station in the field to send internet email where that station has no network connection via another D-Rats station locally who has a connection. In the outgoing message realm, this is identical to what WinLink does via a VHF (UHF) RMS station locally. It does not even require D-Star---it works via a KISS TNC (to another KISS TNC). It can use a repeater or simplex. Responding to email is not as simple as winlink. However, look at the Safety Foundation website map of packet stations in the US. There are pockets of RMS nodes (coincidentally where WinLink is a popular emcomm mode) and huge, enormous swaths of land with nothing. I am only 45 miles from the nearest node and can't come close to using it to communicate. D-Rats does not need this. It does require somebody to have an internet connection with their D-Rats configured to forward email.?
Forms....OK, WinLink spent a lot of time developing really nice forms. My cycnical self says this was to promote the use to ARC and ARES.?
Message Priority....WinLink, as you know, is an automated unattended system. You connect and send. There is no facility to prioritize message traffic before tying up a node for who knows how long.
Voice coordination...WinLink has zero. D-Rats uses (almost always) the slow speed data channel on a D-Star voice frequency. You can talk and do data at the same time (although this really slows it down in real life).?
Channel Availability....D-Rats (and FLDigi) can easily QSY in the event of tons of traffic. WinLink is fixed. WinLink peer to peer can QSY, BUT in that case you lose the principal reason for WinLink...sending internet email to somebody.?
D-Rats has pretty much all the features of the FLDigi suite (file transfer, unattendend operation, error correction) and adds an event log (something ARES is supposed to keep), mapping (better than APRS), modest voice and data security (digital encoding), and more. It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. FLDigi runs on all those PLUS Android phones and tablets. Winlink is Windows only.?
I can go on and on. WinLink, if your have used it much, absolutely needs the internet to work. The others don't. Emcomm requires a solution that is independent of ANY infrastructure. ARMY Mars used to allow WinLink (many of the developers are MARS guys) but banned it because of this dependence.?

Just so you know, Lehigh County PA (I am the EC) practices weekly on D-Rats. We also train on WinLink (limited, as we can only do peer-to-peer here without a local node) and FLDigi. Eastern PA trains on FLDigi all the time. I am on the EPA NBEMS net in 35 minutes, in fact. We try to be able to do everything. However, we feel strongly that reliance on WinLink is a big mistake. Internet dependency, throughput limitations, node available, platform limitation....all that is limiting.?
WinLink is a whiz-bang system that makes some people think amateur radio can support a served agency in any scenario and allow them to sit in the office and use the same old Microsoft Outlook to do it.
The fireman (ham) who deployed to Puerto Rico for Maria has two versions of his story...one published by ARRL touting the wonders of WinLink. The other, MUCH longer and more candid, saying WinLink was nearly worthless. You know how he used it? He got a working cell tower, used his phone for a hotspot and used Telnet to San Juan. That's the story neither ARRL nor Amateur Safety Foundation will tell. The emcomm community is aware of it, though.?
We, as hams, should beware of the appearance of ARRL (ARES) endorsement. They publish pretty much anything, these days. A lot of it does not necessarily promote ham radio as used in emcomm. This month it's "hamwan". Another great idea with extremely limited possible use and dependence on tremendous setup in advance. The WORST was the recent artlcle on FirstNet. That's a cell phone...period. ATT touts it as a solution and got a TON of taxpayer money to basically attempt to catch up to Verizon building out their 4G network. Where 4G is not available, neither is FirstNet. It adds a "dedicated" (I quote this because it's not dedicated most of the time...it is commercially used until an emergency)band 14 for "First responders". You have to pay for this, but a special phone and you get "band 14" plus pre-emptive cell phone use in an emergency. Verizon has used pre-emptive SIM cards for emergency people for years. In the California fires a couple years ago the cell towers burned. For a couple days, until ATT (and others) brought in COWS, ham radio was used to supplement simplex-only use by CalFire (their repeaters were also destroyed). Where was FirstNet? Where was WinLink? Where was infrastructure??

Army MARS has been training for the past couple years on global HF messaging without ANY infrastructure. DoD knows more about threats in the real world than most, and they are assuming you don't have any internet, and don't even have electric power. We, as hams, are expected to provide a solution using whatever is available. This is how we train here. We'd use WinLink if we had a VHF node as PART of our comm suite. Emphasis on PART.?