Hi Thomas:
Take a look through this other WoAD thread to see if there are any other things that jump out at you for troubleshooting: Digirig support in WoAD - #13 by yo7zro
For me, I’ve noticed it’s easy to over drive your audio, so adjusting your volume to 80% or so may help.
Have you tried that same winlink station with a higher power radio? I haven’t had much luck with my VX6R unless I’m line of sight with the gateway, but it’s a different story with 50W
Another thing you could try is if you can hear the TX from the VX6R: this will require a second radio, but it’s a good tool to see if it at least sounds right .
Lastly, check your outstanding frames and fracktime settings. Reducing the frames and increasing fracktime will let you determine earlier if your signal is sufficient for a connection. Sometimes I would try o send a large number of packets, and I would QRN in that timeframe, killing the connection.
Hope this helps!
-Dan