> Really, when you get down to it, the biggest strong points of ALE is
> the standard itself, since it is becoming nearly ubiquitous built in
> to government and commercial transceivers. There are so many EOC,
> SHARES, NGO organizations, and government HF stations now that have
> ALE built in to their transceivers... in an emergency, the ability to
> inter-operate using available HF equipment is a big advantage.
As I look at ALE in the mix of digital modes, especially
from a redundancy perspective, the great weaknesses are:
1. Tiny installed base outside of government and
professional emergency response agencies and responders
and a few volunteer emergency response groups. (Reasons,
beyond lack of interest, may be found in the
following categories.)
2. Difficulty of full-featured use with commonly
available HF transceivers. (I don't recall if ALE
software will function on anything but the proprietary
MS version of windows. If so that leaves millions of
Apple and Linux users out of the picture.)
3. Difficulty of use with commonly owned antennas.
(Broadband HF antennas are rare and most are either
terribly lossy or barely efficient, limiting range
and low-signal effectiveness.)
4. Cost of hardware with embedded ALE.
5. Multiple competing digital modes.
Bonnie and a few others have invested the thousands
of dollars and thousands of hours to develop fine
ALE resources, that is a good thing but is not a
model we can expect huge numbers of Hams to emulate.
For redundancy, because disasters don't care about
the location of pre-staged gear, we need emergency
response modes to be commonly available and easy to
operate.
Good work has been done out there but we still have
a ways to go.
IMHO, YMMV ...
--
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Thanks! & 73, doc kd4e
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============\ # http://bibleseven.com
KD4E =====================================
West Central Florida
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