Andy,
I am no ALE expert, but you can find out more on the HFLINK Yahoo
Group. For most of us the answer is a PC program called PC-ALE and an
ATU... (Personally I run Linux so I remain behind the curve here.)
The Automatic part of ALE requires scanning, and so if you want to be
able to respond to any incoming transmissions, you need to be able to
transmit on scan, so that means an automatic ATU. But you can use ALE
with a 20M dipole and just leave your rig on one frequency and if the
band is open you will hear it.
The military and government users like ALE because it will try a bunch
of bands to make a connection, and since HF is unreliable and only
somewhat predictable, having automatic frequency agility helps them talk
to the people they want to talk to. Hams have an advantage in that we
are often happy to talk to anyone, so even if you run ALE with manual
bandswitching, you will hear when the band is open and can talk. It's
kind of like beaconing, but then you actually get to work the other
station. (Last time I worked a beacon it gave me an RST of 000, using
those really long DAH's!)
This is the aspect of ALE that I had wanted to use Olivia from the field
for, just to announce your presence to people listening automatically
and get it gatewayed to anyone who could hear, so you could then QSY to
the CW or SSB or MFSK or PSK portion of the same band and have a normal
QSO while the high-reliability beacons stayed on Olivia. But it looks
like ALE with its 8MFSK modulation is good for that and has an existing
infrastructure.
You may have noticed that when the band is dead you can hear PSK on
14.070, because of the myth that PSK works anyway. Well, often the band
is not dead, just not active, and the PSKers are serving as propagation
beacons for the rest of us, just there are no rest of us because we
know that the band is dead. ALE solves this problem by sounding
every now and then when you leave it on, and if another ALE program
hears you, bingo, you both know you can have a QSO.
This opportunistic feature of ALE is especially important for 2006-2007
when we all know the bands will be dead. As recent announcements have
shown, ALE finds the openings.
73,
Leigh.
On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 6:21 pm, Andrew J. O'Brien wrote:
But what do I need to transmit ALE? I can receive it but I was under
the impression that one needs a rig that can switch bands and
frequencies automatically while matching the antenna all at the same
time. Is that a totally wrong view of ALE?
Andy K3UK
- Original Message -
From: Leigh L Klotz, Jr. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2005 7:55 PM
Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Olivia Coordination with ALE network
14109.5kHz USB
ALE looks like it achieves many of the goals I had hoped for Olivia for
use with self-spotting.
I wish there were more implementations of ALE in the digital mode
software, even of just decoding.
Leigh.
On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 3:45 pm, expeditionradio wrote:
Coordination with ALE network 14109.5kHz USB:
The K3UK DIGITAL MODES SPOTTING CLUSTER AT telnet://208.15.25.196/
More info at http:///www.obriensweb.com [http:///www.obriensweb.com]
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