It is also possible to have Airmail run on a computer running Windows natively. There are a wide variety of Windows laptops available, some quite inexpensive and some quite a lot fancier. You do not need a very fancy laptop to run Airmail.

LuckGrib is able to work with any Windows computer running Airmail. To make this work, you need to:

• establish a WiFi network. Connect the device running LuckGrib, and the computer running Windows to the same network.
• configure LuckGrib to send its email requests directly to Airmail
• send and receive mail using Airmail in the normal way.
• retrieve the weather data from the newly received email, using the LuckGrib POP3 interface.

These steps will be described in more detail.

Establish a WiFi network.

Please read the discussion regarding Travel Routers in the iOS SailMail guide. A travel router can provide a network for LuckGrib and the Windows computer to share.

WiFi network - IP Addresses

The iOS SailMail guide also described how to switch a Mac running a Windows virtual machine to a static IP address. This is useful, as then the IP address for the Mac will not change each time it reboots and connects to the network.

You will want to do something similar for your Windows computer. Static IP addresses are easer to work with in this scenario.

Use your favorite search engine to find a guide for how to do this with the version of Windows you are using. A search something like this should work:

• “windows static IP address”

Configure Airmail for use with LuckGrib

As mentioned on the main SailMail page, AirMail needs a few small modifications in order to work with LuckGrib.

Configure LuckGrib to use the SailMail SMTP / POP3 interface

Configuring LuckGrib to use Airmail running on a native Windows computer is very similar to how you configure the app to work with Airmail when it is running in a virtual machine.

Follow the iOS or macOS guide to do this. When it comes time to configure LuckGrib for use with Airmail, the differences in this case will be:

• the IP address will be the one you configured directly in Windows.
• the SMTP port for Airmail is, by default, 25.
• the POP3 port for Airmail is, by default, 110.

The ports can be modified in the Airmail: Tools / Options / Mail (pop/smtp) server / Setup window.

With those small modifications, the remainder of the iOS or macOS guide will work for this case.

A note on the Windows firewall

Note that if you are having a hard time getting LuckGrib to communicate with a Windows application, such as Airmail, XGate or UUPlus, the problem may be related to the Windows firewall. See this article on how to configure the Windows firewall.