Russell, As several others will likely point out, conversing with standard ALE can be achieved easily . I am exaggerating a point but ALE's orginal intent for amateur use was to use ALE to establish a contact and then SWITCH to a mode best suited for conditions at the time. Thus you can use ALE to scan and find a station and then switch to...say, PSK31 or Olivia, CW, or even voice.
Using the ALE software available (PC -ALE or Multipsk)you can converse with the other station via some formats standard to ALE , they are AMD, DTM , and DBM. Most use AMD at first and switch to DTM if conditions require it. The experience of most is that these formats, especially in PC-ALE, are not very robust due to sound card calibration issues. I urge ALE users to use ALE for the Automatic Link Establishment and then switch to better communication tools (you mad need to QSY to the correct band segments too). If you make a "link" with ALE, then you can almost always expect that PSK31, MFSK16, DominoEX, CW, and Olivia will work well on that same band. I'm waiting for that next version of ALE software that makes the link and instead of simple AMD /DTM options, the sofware would use SNR information established while making the link and then display digital modes suitable within that SNR. Then, up would pop an options window that lists PSK, MFSK16, etc, etc. Multipsk provides much of this already, albeit manually. I will repeat my most frequent thoughts about ALE... there is nothing better for establishing a link on the amateur bands and there is nothing worse (than AMD/DTM with common PC souncards ) for conversing. Andy K3UK
