I received an ALE call on 7MHz from John VE5MU today at approximately 0250UTC. I was in another room, away from the radio, and heard John's call trigger my computer's speaker beeping, so I went to the keyboard. John had already sent me a short hello message by the time I reached the keyboard. His signal was audibly about RST329, with bad QRN and deep fluttery QSB. I was running 50Watts and a dipole antenna, using MULTIPSK.
I sent the following message via FAE ARQ, total 68 seconds: THIS IS A TEST OF THE EMERGENCY RELIEF MESSAGING SYSTEM. THIS IS ONLY A DRILL. SUPPLIES ARE NEEDED FOR THE RELIEF STATION AT XYZ CITY CENTER. SEND 1000 MEALS AND 500 GALLONS OF WATER. THIS IS ONLY A DRILL. END OF MESSAGE John sent the same message back via FAE ARQ, total 90 seconds: THIS IS A TEST OF THE EMERGENCY RELIEF MESSAGING SYSTEM. THIS IS ONLY A DRILL. SUPPLIES ARE NEEDED FOR THE RELIEF STATION AT XYZ CITY CENTER. SEND 1000 MEALS AND 500 GALLONS OF WATER. THIS IS ONLY A DRILL. END OF MESSAGE We continued to chat via keyboarding FAE ARQ, then signed off. The system seemed to work well, linked, and passed a message with no errors, in adverse propagation conditions. Bonnie KQ6XA
