From the ITU--September 10, 2018 was an important date. The HR0COP gateway in Honduras began operations. Since then, three more nodes have started operations: On October 9, TI0BCR in Costa Rica; on November 6, HI8COE in Dominican Republic; and, on November 8, TG0CND in Guatemala.

All four gateways are part of the Alternate Emergency Telecommunications network. The network is implementing the Winlink solution (www.winlink.org). Winlink is a technology solution created and maintained by radio amateurs. It has a proven record during emergencies. As recently as 2017, Winlink was extensively used in the aftermath of the high-impact hurricane season in the Caribbean and also after the earthquake in Mexico.

As many good ideas, the idea of ITU and IARU to increase emergency telecommunications capabilities using Winlink ignited from a conversation during a CITEL meeting in August 2017 between Rodrigo Robles, ITU Emergency Telecommunications focal point for the Americas, and César Pío Santos HR2P, IARU Region 2 Emergency Coordinator. From the beginning this idea had the decisive support of Brahima Sanou, BDT Director and Bruno Ramos, Regional Director for the Americas Regional Office. Emergency Telecommunications has been a priority for many years in the Americas Region. In WTDC 2017, it was consensus as a regional initiative for 2019-2022.

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12 November 2018--Last year (October time frame) Winlink moved all CMS server resources to the cloud and upgraded several critical infrastructure resources. One such resource was our low-level web services that applications like RMS Trimode, RMS Linux Gateway, BPQ32, Winlink Express, Pat, etc. use to report activity and get information to and from Winlink servers.

We believe most (if not all), application authors have made the necessary changes to switch to these new Winlink resources. While they did, we continued to run the legacy web services and support functions on our servers. However and unfortunately, not all users of the assorted programs have upgraded to the newer, changed versions. Now is the time! Really, NOW is the time.

Effective 1 January 2019 the older Winlink web services will be discontinued. Impacts to old program versions may range from none, to not showing up in channel listings, to simply just not working at all. Also, you are not likely to get support for older, now incompatible versions.

Be assured that current versions are in popular use and are well-tested. Please update your software today!

--The Winlink Development Team

There are an ever increasing number of Winlink gateways using outdated software. Being a minor version or two out of date would rarely be an issue, but some gateways are several important version releases behind. See the Tools|Gateway Version tab on the Winlink web site or directly at: https://cms.winlink.org:444/SysopVersions.aspx for a look at which stations are behind with updates.

It is critical that gateway sysops maintain use of current versions of gateway software to remain compatible with changes with core Winlink services and more importantly, to provide the best possible experience to users. See https://www.winlink.org/content/join_gateway_sysop_team_sysop_guidelines for specific gateway sysop guidelines.

Almost a year ago we made several major changes to the Winlink CMS infrastructure. All (known) software authors were notified months in advance of this change. Today, there are still a few that haven't updated software to use the current Winlink system. At some point, support for the way the older system operated will be removed and programs that haven't been updated will either fail to function or function with reduced capabilities. If your gateway software falls into this category please contact the author to let them know.

73, Lee K0QED
Winlink Development Team