Understanding Solar Indices

     OPERATING WINLINK HF PORTABLE 

Last Thursday 24 June 2021, I operated WINLINK (HF VARA 4.4.3 aka poor man's PACTOR) and later some FT8 on 20m with my IC-705, a 57cm LOOP and a GPD 6inch pocket PC at St Mary's Island next to it's Lightouse near Whitley Bay NorthEast England.

This was a BOTA (Benches On The Air Hi hi hi!!!) operation!

Here is a description of my setup:

Everything fits in the backpack including the mini laptop, the mini loop, a backup 25Ah battery for the PC, an Elecraft T1 ATU with 9:1 balun and 10 meters cable, 2 spare batteries for the IC-705, a small SPX-100 antenna for the radio and a small 40cm tactical antenna for 2m/70cm bands. So I have 4 antennas in there, just in case! There is enough room for a 4.5 meters fiberglass rod on the side pocket which can be used for supporting the 10m wire and Elecraft T1 ATU, next to the SPX-100 antenna!

The mini LOOP ANTENNA is an early ALPHA LOOP which I bought some years ago for $120 including postage to Greece. Now the same guy sells exactly the same mini LOOPs for more than $400 just because now the same ALPHA LOOP is the "recommended official" portable antenna for the IC-705 by ICOM.

Now, because I am a PACTOR die hard guy really, all I need is to buy or make some cables so that it can connect my P4dragon DR-7400 between the mini laptop and my IC-705, but heck I am not sure I want to do this because with the registered VARA 4.4.3 all I need is a micro USB to USB cable with some toroids at both ends and I can run WINLINK EXPRESS without a PACTOR Modem. I wrote to SCS but they were not very helpful, so I am alone on this one.

As for the registered VARA 4.4.3 not the previous versions, what can I say, I am really impressed. I think it is as good as a PACTOR 3 modem and during the initial connection to an RMS station, it appears to beat all PACTOR modems speedwise, well some times, or at least it is on par if you use the default values of WINLINK EXPRESS for your PACTOR modem. After the initial connection it is nearly as good as a PACTOR 3 modem. This only happens with the latest registered VARA 4.4.3 because now it uses compression during the initial connecting session until the actual transfer starts where it stops the compression as WINLINK uses B2F. I have a feeling that PACTOR does not use compression at the initial connecting session but I could be wrong.
Also it seems that the default TXD=30 and CSD=50 values for PACTOR in WINLINK EXPRESS are a bit too long and if you leave the defaults in it because you might have a slow SDR Radio (KX3 and IC-7610 come to mind), PACTOR speed sucks and you get the illusion that VARA is better. I use TXD=20 and CSD=25 instead of 30 and 50.
Really anything else than an IC-7300 and IC-705 or any other old style non SDR HF Radio seem to have this problem with PACTOR.

It is amazing how good is VARA with an IC-705 and a mini LOOP antenna on HF. I couldn't believe how good is VARA until 4.4.3 came out and I registered it.

If there is no propagation and I cannot catch any DX, I can always go fishing with the fishing pole! Hi hi hi!!!

73 de Demetre M0SUY/SV1UY