Yet another one I’m not going to recreate the documentation required to get it working… but here’s a couple sites with working solutions:
- WG1V’s documentation and a PDF of the site – this one works pretty well, though “pat” is a bit different as an application. I don’t know much about the command line interface, but the HTTP interface does seem to function
- KI6ESH describes the whole setup process on his site – here’s a PDF of that site – I didn’t follow these instructions, just because WG1V’s “bottle” for crossover seemed to be a bit more complete
Both of these rely on “Crossover” to interface all the hardware and software… which honestly seems to be a more functional way of doing things than getting parallels to work. I tried that, but to no avail, the USB drivers for the Icom 7300 just didn’t want to play nice.
One change I did make to WG1V’s approach was to use WFView to serve the RigCTLD port. I decided to go this route, since I already had it serving (And working) for WSJT-X and FLDIGI. On another note, WFView also lets me serve either my 7300 or 705 to these applications by simply changing which radio is interfaced to the software. In my case, I usually connect the 705 through the network (Wireless) and the 7300 through USB… this means all I need to change is one setting in WFview, and then where the modems are getting audio from. Eventually, I might figure out how to auto-route the USB audio into BlackHole 2CH – then I wouldn’t need to mess with that either.
I have noticed that occasionally, the applications in question seem to not completely release control of the radio, so I have to manually kill the applications, and restart WFView to change which radio I’m working with. I’m still working on the details there, but it’s a learning process.
I did choose to update the VARA installation within the crossover “bottle” – the previous version seemed to freeze up a bit. The new one seems more stable – and once I got my tuner appropriately adjusted, it happily transmitted and quickly found a connection on the east coast on 20M… I still have antenna work to do to reliably connect to much closer, I think (at least on 20).
One challenge is finding a node to reliably connect to – there’s a lot in Texas, but on 20M, it was easier to connect to a 2- land station. I have to say, that PAT, through the web interface, isn’t too bad. It doesn’t have the built in propagation predictors that WinLinkExpress has, but that can be worked around.
It did take 2 attempts (the first one couldn’t establish some part of the connection), but I sent myself 2 emails over RF:
I still have a LOT to figure out and learn – but it’s another box checked getting stuff working on the Mac…