I have been trying to use the HFN system for some time now. I have had minimal success with connecting to more distant stations, however, I have had no luck with stations within NVIS range.
After many attempts over many days, I contacted the two closest stations to my location, (via regular e-mail. One station is not too much over 100 miles away and the other about 200. Last night the closest station informed me that they do not even participate with the HFLink group anymore. I checked and they had been removed from the HFN Coverage Map in just the past few days. This morning, I received communication from the other station and they too had indicated that they were no longer operational on ALE. No wonder I have had no luck in NVIS or close in communications!! The HFLink group has said they have a large number of stations that wish to be "Pilot" stations which is their name for the server station that provides this bridge between HF and e-mail and SMS messaging. It looks like they need many, many more stations in order to have a system that can provide NVIS connections. Suggestion to the HFN group: Keep your information current on your web site. There should also be some way to show active or inactive stations on the graphical display, since I know at least one is not on line here in the U.S. at the moment. But you would not have learned that from the information on the web site because it appears to be an active station and is also listed in the separate station list. Are any of the group members actually using the system for e-mail? Or for other purposes? I have only been able to send the short AMD type of messages. While not practical for most messaging, due to the 90 character limitation which includes the necessary prowords and address, it can at least demonstrate the feasibility of the system. If anyone is having luck with the system, can you share your exact method of formatting the messages? My DTM nor DBM messages appear to be accepted but I never actually get the e-mail back. I am only using SMTP as recent information from one of the Pilot station operators indicated that if you send traffic to yourself via the Winlink2000 path (WL2K proword in the message header) it assumes you already have the message and will not route it to you. Thus I have been using only the SMTP proword. 73, Rick, KV9U
