My home county's ARES/RACES is successfully using WINLINK both HF and VHF and making an extraordinarily good impression on emergency management with our ability to provide them with backup e-mail connectivity should they ever lose it in a disaster. In some nuclear generation station tests mandated by FEMA we are expected to transmit lengthy messages that would take forever via voice links but go just fine via the VHF Telpac links. Without it, we simply can't do what is wanted from us in our county in the present day to support emergency management's messaging requirements. My OM is using WINLINK and related software successfully from our house using a plain old Kantronics TNC, a regular VHF/UHF transceiver, and an ancient Kenwood TS 440S for HF. A lot of our other ARES/RACES groups in EPA are successful with it also and moving ahead. While other people argue about who doesn't like whom because of what happened years ago, and whose favorite mode is better than somebody else's favorite mode, local hams are getting the job done and making ham radio look like the valuable service that it is. The demo last summer was not effective ... at least the part I saw wasn't. But what I'm seeing on a daily basis in my home county is impressive. The key person for us is the guy who made it all happen in the Honduras medical humanitarian project that was recently the subject of an article in QST. Those people use it out in the jungle because it works. I'm no expert on these things, but I can see what's in front of me. 73 - Kay N3KN