Send and receive email on HF

Last updated: 2025-09-14 22:00

Do you want to be able to send and receive email painfully slowly from anywhere in the world, by bouncing radio waves off the ionosphere, via a network of dedicated stations? If so, then this is page for you.

It's taken me a while to get this working, but now I have, I will share my script for this.
The script is for Windows (running under Git Bash), but it is easy to understand and make it work on Linux.


        #!/bin/bash

        

        '/c/Program Files/hamlib-w64-4.6.5/bin/rigctld.exe -v
        --model=2037 -r COM3 &'

        sleep 1

        /c/Users/You/Downloads/ardopcf_amd64_Windows_64.exe
        8515 0 1 --hostcommands "MYCALL Y0URCALL;DRIVELVEL 2"
        --webgui 8093 &

        /c/Users/You/Downloads/pat_0.19.1_windows_i386/pat.exe http
        &

Before running

Set up or create your winlink.org account by running pat.exe configure. It should talk you through all the steps to configure pat

You will need to change the model number for rigctld, and Y0URCALL.
When you run this script, it will start the ARDOPCF UI on http://127.0.0.1:8093 and the PAT UI on http://127.0.0.1:8080/ui
The 0 and 1 in the ardopcf parameters are the soundcards to use as input and output. ardopcf will output what soundcards it finds, and the numbers of them.
The DRIVELEVEL is the audio output volume. Change between 1 and 10 while checking your ALC.
Run it in Git Bash by ./ardop.sh (or whatever you saved the file as)

Setup in PAT

When PAT is running, you also need to configure via the web UI.
Action, Configure.
Under Rig Control, add a rig, with type TCP, and Address/Port 127.0.0.1:4532 (the default hamrig port). Restart PAT.
Transports, ARDOP.
Set the TNC address to localhost:8515, and the rig to the one you created in a previous step. Restart PAT.

Sending and receiving email

It takes a really long time to send/receive. Like 5 minutes for a very short text email. And that is once you have established a connection with a station, which isn't always easy.
Once you have got PAT configured correctly, you should be able to go to the Action, Connect page.
Select transport ARDOP. Tick radio only. Show RMS list. Update cache. Filter by band. Choose a station that you think you can connect to. (You can check the Winlink gateway map to see where stations are active, and https://g7vrd.co.uk/wspr/IO81 to see what are the best bands for your locator. Mode is always USB, even for under 10 MHz. Ensure your radio is tuned, and everything is set correctly to transmit. Click connect.
This will start the connection phase.

If the connection phase is successful (it often isn't), you can now send and receive emails. Please note again - it is very slow. I recommend not sending anything larger than 1kb. HTML email will unnecessarily increase the size of the email, so disable that. Disable email signatures, footers, legal disclaimers etc.
Only addresses that you have sent to are permitted to send to you. This is to stop you having to download many spam emails.

Shutting down

killall pat ardopcf_amd64_Windows_64 rigctld doesn't work in Git Bash, so you'll have to run ps auxw and kill the processes by number: kill 12 34 56

What year is this?

As a Linux user, can I say how odd it feels in 2025 to download binaries from websites and then run them?