To help Winlink's newbies overcome software fright when operating Winlink Express for the first time, San Diego, California ARES created a series of 24 short videos to help newcomers find the right button to click in the Express software menus. The topics of the short videos range in difficulty from simple, such as sending a Winlink email to a Gmail account, to challenging, such as using software tools to locate a neighbor operating in the vicinity.
The 24 videos range in length from one to five minutes and cover the tasks that a deployed operator might be expected to accomplish in the field.
The video content gives operators experience sending messages with and without attachments. For example, ICS Forms become .xml attachments for transmission; however, the Radiogram and Race Tracker templates re-format data but do not result in an outgoing attachment. The videos demonstrate sending both types of messages.
The videos provide tips for creating neatly-formatted, automatically-generated ICS Form 309 Comm Logs which are impressive documents to turn over to a Served Agency as soon as an exercise concludes.
The San Diego ARES Winlink video playlist is open to the public and is located at:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-7mirT-kjfs84FQzLr-qv066Kl94rtYM
. . . Rob
K6RJF
