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flmsg

Fills in and transmits the standard message forms EMCOMM runs on

What it does

Provides the forms that emergency and public-service traffic uses -- ICS 213 and the rest of the ICS set, ARRL radiogram, plaintext and several agency-specific ones -- as fill-in templates, then compresses each into a compact wire format and sends it through fldigi. The receiving end gets the same form back, laid out, and can print it or open it in a browser.

Why you would want it

Formal message handling is form handling. An agency wants an ICS 213, not a paragraph, and getting the fields right matters more than the prose. This sends one in a fraction of the airtime the printed form would take, because only the field contents cross the link, and it hands the other end something an official can sign rather than a transcript.

Before it will work

fldigi, running and configured for the mode in use. A browser for viewing received forms, which is what the xdg-utils recommendation is for.

How it installs

  • apt: flmsg

Known problems

Both ends need compatible flmsg versions for a form the sender has and the receiver does not; the failure is a form that renders wrongly rather than an error. Custom agency forms are files that have to be distributed separately, and that distribution is the part that breaks during an actual activation rather than during a drill. Debian's Homepage field for this package points at w1hkj.com, which no longer serves the project. Corrected 2026-08-29 after re-checking: it does still resolve, and both it and www.w1hkj.com 301-redirect to kylegentz.com, which has no DNS record at all — so the chain ends nowhere. The subpaths Debian cites return 404 on the way. An earlier note here said the redirect landed on "an unrelated site"; that was read from an empty response and the accurate statement is that the target does not exist. Either way the packaged link is useless, and the live project is w1hkj.org, which is what this manifest points at.

Keeping it current

  • probe: apt policy
  • strategy: apt_upgrade

Where to get help with the software itself

The W1HKJ suite -- linuxham on groups.io.

Source: catalog/packages/flmsg.yaml