Last night and this morning I tested the DARES (Wiki | Website) DWC-software, what they call ‘DWS’ (Dutch Winlink System; link).

What it does is stitching together different stand-alone programs, like VARA-FM, Winlink, APRSIS32, a packet monitor, Packet digipeater and a UZ7HO soundmodem for packet radio. The brain of this suite is a KISS-port multiplexer, called the Packet Agent. Which acts as a router for different RX and TX signals and allows former mentioned programs to attach themselves to these ports via TCP routing.

Under the hood, the whole DWC-suite alters some functionality of all attached programs and configurates them to properly work with the Packet Agent. It’s now easier to setup basic station and connectivity settings via one program, instead of adjusting the settings of the different programs themselves. You can also start and stop all attached programs via the DWC main program, which is nice.

There are some caveats, though. This software suite is tailored for use with DARES and therefore it preconfigures all attached programs to that use. The digipeater, for example, will broadcast a standarized beacon string to the ‘ARES‘ group, fitting for the DARES context and it filters out routings for packet data that does not have use in a DARES context. Also it uses the -12 postfix (mobile station) to your callsign, even though some who use this suite, are operating from a base station. Some of these settings are hard to adjust by hand and require tinkering in the config files, which can be found in the installation folder.

If there was more customization possible in that regard, this suite would be a really good general purpose one-click off-grid tool for hams. It’s already really good and I can see the years of effort and dedication was put into developing this software suite. However, it would be nice to have an option for non-emergency use.

I had a fun time testing this suite and I will probably be using this when SHTF, not because it does things that former programs couldn’t, but because its a one-click tool, that gets you on the air within a minute, properly set-up for emercency comms and digipeating. That’s worth a lot.

73