Winlink Express will change its type and a few colors. It will not reskin the whole program. He opens it as KE2DFQ, on a copy he has already turned blue in the places the program allows, with black and white still stuck in other panes.
Type Size
Settings is where this series lives. Font for text is Courier New, regular, size 10. The picker is the fonts installed on that PC. His usual coding fonts are not on this machine yet. He likes a green-on-black screen. That preference goes back to computers he used at seven or eight, in the early 80s. He is also blunt about his eyes. Regular is enough. He takes the size from 10 to 14. The dialog shows a sample. After OK, the open message is readable without leaning into the monitor, which is the point if someone is watching on a TV.
The message list is still small. Font for lists gets the same regular face, not bold. Unread rows turn bold by themselves. If the base font is already bold, that signal disappears. He sets the list to 12, a step under the message text. The columns can be dragged: message ID, time, sender, recipient, subject. Rows scroll. The panes do not. He wanted the context area shorter and the system, personal, and global folders taller. Those heights are fixed.
The Colors You Actually Get
Most programs let you pick a theme. Here the choice is the text fields and the lists.
He sets the message text to light pink and leaves the background black. The open message turns pink instead of the green he had. A crimson background is too bright. He already knows he will put black and green back when the demo is over.
List colors are the next control. Medium aquamarine on dark salmon is unreadable. He goes back in. Light green on black is the combination he wants. That color dialog does not grow the font. He would have liked it to. He finds black for the background.
There is still no dark mode for the chrome around those panes. The dark modes he is thinking of are mostly web apps. He operates in the middle of the night and does not want a white window lighting the shack. He says so, and then he keeps going through the rest of the menus so the personalization options are all on the table.
What He Leaves Alone
A block of settings is not really about looks. He points at them and cancels.
Service codes decide which servers you pull. PUBLIC is the default everyone has. Emergency-communications groups such as ARES or RACES can put you on a private server, and a club can have its own code. You add the code if you want mail that is stored there.
His address and phone number are on the screen. He is not hiding them. They are already on the FCC site. The registration key is tied to his call. Copying it onto another installation does nothing unless that station is operating as him.
One option lists pending incoming messages before they download. It appears twice, in two different places, along with a warning about connections to stations that are holding mail. He is not sure of the benefit unless you can refuse a single message. He does not change it.
He will not install a field-test beta. He wants the build that works. He will not auto-install updates with no prompt. An update can take a working emergency station and break it.
The catalog request is the screen from the position-report video, the one that can ask for stations near you. Other requests pull forms and weather. He is not opening those today.
Preferences He Would Actually Use
How long you can look at a message before it marks read. The default is 2 seconds. He would leave it.
Read receipts, if the sender asked for one, should not go back out over the radio unless you truly need them. That is another transmission, and the station on the far end may be on the air too. A pure telnet session is different, because you are on the internet. You can also ignore receipt requests on the way in, which means you can ask for a receipt and still never get one if the other operator has that box checked.
Automatically adding a contact for every address is a box he likes. He had to type John Perkins in by hand. If the contact list gets crowded, turn it off.
Disallowing edits to messages you have sent is for a group that cannot have traffic changed or deleted. He leaves it unchecked on his own install.
Location in the message headers stays on. That was the previous video. In the field, every message carries the current position.
Line wrap for printing is a character count. He calls 72 a good figure on a smaller screen. Distance is kilometers or miles. He is in the US, so miles. The clock is UTC or local. He changes that option and does not say which value he kept.
Update user options repeats part of the first screen. Prefixes or suffixes for operating outside the country go here. You can forward incoming Winlink to another address if you will be away from the program.
Message notification is the same idea again, and he wonders out loud whether filling the box in one screen writes it to the others. If the station sends and receives on a schedule, you can have a notice sent to another address, pick the times, and play a sound for a priority message. On the radio he starts the session himself, so a lot of that is for telnet on a timer. Forwarding shows up here a second time.
Form settings can stay on the defaults until you are using forms. Nets have check-in forms. ARES and RACES have message forms. It is the same traffic you would read on the air, carried as a Winlink message. He is saving forms for another session.
Auto session open on startup is set to none. He thinks that is what you want, unless every launch should also open a session. You pick which session. In a deployment he can see turning it on so the program is already talking to the post office you use.
Contacts are the address book. A Winlink email address in that list collapses to the call sign. Group addresses let you write to one name and have it fan out. Personal folders and global folders are where you file messages, the same idea as mail folders. The hybrid network is a pickup station: you choose stations that will hold messages, then connect to them to collect.
Where the Propagation Numbers Show Up
The propagation block is radiated power and the thresholds for a green path and a yellow path. He opens a VARA HF session to show the result. VARA opens with it. COM 3 is off because the radio is off. Channel selection is easier to read after the font change. Each row has a call sign, a frequency, and a mode. The mode is the speed.
He says that if you have not paid for VARA, or for Winlink Express, you are probably stuck at 500. Paying both is what gets the faster speed, and he thinks that matters when you are moving forms.
The green, yellow, and red marks use those propagation numbers: how far the gateway is, and how much power you told it you are running. His distances are in miles. A gateway he usually connects to was missing from the list earlier and is on it now. He does not get the call out cleanly. A station about 4 miles away is on a few bands. A station about 39 miles away has the same score and is sorted ahead of the closer one. John is close enough that working him on HF is awkward. He closes the session. The settings screen is just the weights behind that sort.
Usage stats do not have much on them. The background of that report stays white. Light green type on it looks wrong. He wants the developers to let the whole interface be set, not only the message panes. No background tasks are running. Backup and restore are there. He exits, and the new-message font size has kept the change.
Templates are the forms. You can add your own. The general set includes a Winlink check-in, a checkout, and a radio-net log. Other groups will tell you which extra forms to load, or hand them to you. He stops there. Customization, as Winlink Express allows it, is the fonts, the two color pairs, and the preference boxes above.
Transcript
He is personalizing Winlink Express: fonts, colors, and whatever else the menus actually allow. He is Kevin, KE2DFQ. His window is already partly customized. The usual white is blue in the places he could change. Other panes are still black or still white. The program does not let you restyle all of it. The type is tiny. He has trouble reading it with glasses, and it will be worse on a television.
Settings is the menu for this series. Font for text is Courier New, regular, size 10. He can change the face. The list is the fonts installed on the computer. The ones he prefers are not installed here yet. He got his start on computers at about seven or eight, in the early 80s, and he still likes green on black, and he likes a code-style font. He picks one that is on the machine. Regular is fine. His eyes are getting worse. He moves the size from 10 to 14. The sample looks better. OK. The open message is readable without zooming in.
The lists are still small. Font for lists gets the same treatment, except not bold. Unread messages in the list change from regular to bold, so a bold base font would hide that. Regular, size 12. He stretches the columns: message ID, time, sender, recipient, subject. He can scroll the rows. He cannot change the height of the blocks. He wants the context pane smaller and the system, personal, and global folders larger. That control is not there.
Color themes are limited to the text fields and the lists. He sets the text-field color to light pink and leaves the background black. The message turns pink instead of green. A crimson background is too bright. He will go back to black and green after the demo. List colors are the other option. Medium aquamarine text on a dark salmon background is unreadable. He switches toward light green on black. The font size does not increase on that screen. He finds the black background. He wishes the text color and the size were easier to judge, and he wishes there was a full dark mode the way web software has. He is in the shack at 3 a.m. and does not want a white screen lighting the room.
He keeps scrolling. Preferences, form settings, auto session open on startup, contacts. A lot of it is for other videos. Position reports and GPS comments were the recent one. Personalization in this pile is mostly the service codes. PUBLIC is the default. An emergency-communications group such as ARES or RACES may put you on a private server. A club or another group can have its own code. The code is what lets you collect mail stored on that server.
His home address is on the screen, and his phone number. He says both are already on the FCC site. The registration key is useless on someone else’s install. It is registered to his call. Options he does not flip: show pending incoming messages before download, unless you can refuse one; install a field-test beta; install updates automatically with no prompt. An unattended update can break a system you are counting on in an emergency. He cancels. No changes on that form.
Fonts and colors are done. The catalog request is the nearby-stations query from last time, plus forms and weather reports he is not opening. Preferences: seconds you can view a message before it marks read. The default is 2. He would keep it. The pending-message list and the warning about stations holding mail show up again. He thinks it is odd they live in two places.
Automatic read receipts, when the sender requested one, are something he does not recommend on the radio. It is extra traffic, and the other end may be on the air. Pure telnet does not care. You can ignore incoming receipt requests, so a request you send still dies if they have that on.
Automatically adding a contact for each destination is a box he likes. He had to add John Perkins by hand. If the list fills up, turn the box off. Disallowing edits to sent messages is for a group that cannot have traffic changed or deleted. He leaves it unchecked. Location in the headers stays on, from the position video, especially for portable work. Wrap print lines after a set number of characters. He calls 72 a good amount on a small screen. Distance is kilometers or miles. He chooses miles. Time is UTC or local. He updates it.
Update user options repeats the prefixes and suffixes for a call used out of the country, and forwarding all incoming mail to another address if you will be away. Message notification and forwarding are duplicated again. If send and receive run on a schedule, you can be notified at another address, set the times, and play a sound for a priority message. On the radio he controls the session, so those matter more for scheduled telnet. He does not know if one of the forward boxes saves the others or if you fill them all in.
Form settings stay on defaults if you are not using forms. Nets have check-ins. ARES and RACES have message forms. Same idea as reading it on the air, sent as Winlink instead. Another session. Auto session open on startup is none, which he thinks is right unless you want a session every time the program launches. You can pick the session type. In a deployment you might want it talking to the post office as soon as it opens.
Contacts are the list. A Winlink email there becomes just the call sign. Group addresses send one message to a set of people. Personal and global folders are filing. The hybrid network is a message pickup station you connect to when you want the mail. Propagation parameters are radiated power and the numbers for a green quality and a yellow quality.
He opens VARA HF. VARA pops up with the session. COM 3 is off because the radio is off. Channel selection is readable at the new font size. Call signs, frequencies, and the mode, which is the speed. Without a paid VARA license or a paid Winlink Express license, he says you are probably stuck at 500. Both fees matter if you move a lot of forms. The quality color is distance and power. His unit is miles. A gateway he usually uses, and that was missing earlier, is on the list now. A station he reads at about 4 miles is on a few bands. A station at about 39 miles has the same score and is placed ahead of the closer one. John is close enough that HF to him is difficult. He closes the session. Those settings are what the sort is using.
Usage stats are thin. The report background cannot be set. Light green type on white is a bad combination, and other reports will do the same. He wants full control of the look. No background tasks. Backup and restore are on the menu. He exits. New messages kept the larger font. Templates are where some forms live, and you can add your own. General forms include Winlink check-in, checkout, and a radio-net log. Other groups have their own, listed or handed to you. Forms are a later session. He stops. There is not much more customization than what he just opened.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you make the type bigger?
Settings, then Font for text. The default he found was Courier New, regular, size 10. The list is whatever is installed on that computer. He picked a font, left it regular, and set the size to 14. Font for lists is the next item. He used the same regular font at size 12, not bold, so unread mail can still switch to bold. Column widths for message ID, time, sender, recipient, and subject can be dragged. The folder panes cannot be resized.
What colors can you change?
Text in the message fields, and text in the lists. He tried light pink on black, then a crimson background he did not like, then light green on black for the text. For the lists he tried medium aquamarine on dark salmon, which he could not read, and went back. A report screen stayed white behind that light green type. There is no full dark mode.
Which preference boxes did he actually set?
He left the seconds-before-read default at 2. He does not send read receipts automatically over radio, because that is extra traffic and the other station may be on the air. Telnet is a different case. He does like automatically adding a contact for each address. He had typed his friend John Perkins in by hand. He leaves 'disallow editing messages you sent' unchecked. He includes location in the headers. Wrap is 72 characters. Distance is miles, because he is in the US. Time can be UTC or local. He changed that control and did not say which one he left it on.
What did the VARA list show?
He opened a VARA HF session. VARA came up with it. COM 3 was already off because the radio was off. The channel list shows call signs, frequencies, and the mode, which is really the speed. Without the VARA license fee and the Winlink Express license fee, he said you are stuck at 500, and that matters if you send a lot of forms. Green, yellow, and red come from distance and the power in the propagation settings. His distances were in miles. A station about 4 miles away, on a few bands, tied a station about 39 miles away, and the farther one was listed first. A gateway he usually uses had been missing and then appeared. Someone he called John is close enough that HF between them is hard.