Pat Is My Friend
I’ve been over the topic of my move from Windows and Windows-only ham software in the past, so I won’t rehash it. For minimal context I will say that there are no Microsoft products in my shack (aside from my Microsoft Surface Go 2 that runs Ubuntu). I would love to say that I only use FOSS but that’s not true and might not ever be true. There are always going to be trade-offs. I will always choose FOSS when there is a good option for my use case.
That said, my love for pat has only grown over the past couple of years that I’ve been using it. Why? Because it’s simple and incredibly versatile. I can run it as a process in the background and access it through a browswer or I can run it from the command line like the 1337 h@XX0r that I am. That level of flexibility cannot be matched by other software for Winlink work.
Making It Easier
The one thing that I find challenging is remembering all of the things that pat can do. In service of my memory, I made a couple of notes that I’m going to memorialize here. The first of these is getting pat set up to use the web client.
I wrote a nifty little script that I call “startpat.sh”. I drop it into my /user/local/bin and call it a day. I have this on all of my radio related computers. It is simply:
#!/bin/bash rigctl -m 2 M PKTUSB 3000 pat –listen “ardop,varahf” http
This script assumes that I have rigctld running somewhere and I almost always do if I’m running my radio. I won’t go into that here as I cover that in detail elsewhere on the blog. It also assumes that the modem, Ardop or VARA HF, is running as well. The rigctl command is putting things into data mode and setting the passband. Then the script sets pat up to use either Ardop or VARA HF as a modem and spin up the http listener.
With that script running, I go to http://localhost:8080 and I get the pat web interface. From there, I can check my mail or send more mail or manage the mail with a very nice, if simple, GUI. This is a total win and probably best for a lot of people who are new to Winlink operations. The pat manual covers the features nicely.
The Command Line
The thing that makes pat very powerful for me, however, is using it from the command line. I find that using a trackpad in the field is a nightmare and I often forget my Bluetooth mouse. Being able to call pat from the command line and do All Of The Things is great!
The first thing I might do is compose a message.
pat compose
Based on your settings, that kick off some interactive prompts. It asks for the source, destination, and subject of the email. It also asks if you want to keep the messge on a peer to peer transmission. I’ve never done that and I probably should. Once you’ve answered those questions, you get dumped to text editor. For me, that’s vim. I write my message and when I quit, I get to tell pat to go ahead and queue it up for sending. Very easy.
One thing that the web UI does is compile and maintain a list of stations for connections. That includes the callsign, frequency, bandwidth, and mode. From the command line, assuming an internet connection, you can get a list of gateways like this:
pat rmslist -s -m varahf -b '40m' > pat.txt
What does that do? Let’s break it down.
pat rmslist will give you a listing of all of the registered Winlink gateways.
-s will sort them by distance from your station (as defined in your configuration).
-m sets the mode. In this example that is VARA HF.
-b allows you to specify which band you want. 40-meters in this case.
In this example, I dump all of the results into a text file called pat.txt. When I open that text file, I can see all of the stations that I can try to connect with along with a handy string that I will need to copy for command line use:
varahf:///WW2MI?bw=2750&freq=7102.1
That string that is given in response to the rmslist command is exactly what is needed to connect pat from the command line.
pat connect "varahf:///WW2MI?bw=2750&freq=7102.1"
This kicks off an attempt to connect to WW2MI on 7.1021 MHz using the VARA HF modem with a bandwidth of 2750. After issuing the command, all there is to do is wait for it to connect and then watch as it sends all messages that are in the outbox and then pull down any messages from the server.
With all of my mail downloaded, I can read it interactively with:
pat read
That gets me into some serious Pine and Mutt nostalgia. It’s glorious to read email from the command line. Everyone should have that experience! For real… It’s cool!
Quick Trick?
I’ll be honest, I usually get my mail using telnet.
pat connect telnet
Since I’m almost always checking in to a net when there are plenty of other people doing the same thing, I like to get out of the way. Getting my mail with telnet means that the radio isn’t used at all. It all goes across the internet. That’s just a thing I do sometimes to make things move faster.
I’d never do that to send a message to something like Winlink Wednesday, for example, as it defeats the purpose. I need to be sure that my station can connect over the air.
Final
Since I moved to pat, I’ve not looked back. Winlink Express was a nightmare for me and I’ve no desire to revisit it. pat lets me work my way on any platform I use (Linux or MacOS).
There are plenty of other tricks and I’ve looked at writing wrapper scripts for some of the things I do, but I don’t want to rely too heavily on scripts. I like to know how to use the software so that I can if I’m somewhere else like the club site or at another station.
pat works flawlessly on MacOS and on my Linux systems. I can’t really say enough good stuff about it but I will close by saying that I don’t think about it much and I think that says a lot. The less I have to think about using a piece of software, the better it is.
And if you’re wondering if pat can do something with regard to Winlink, the answer is going to be Yes. Dig around in the manual or ask pat help as it is quite thorough.
73 and thanks for reading!
