I always chuckle when operators who have never used scanning ALE or never even used ALE on the ham bands try to make pronouncements as if they are experts.
I have 100 ALE stations in my log here since I reset the log file just before the AOTAW event in October 2007. My ALE station is not special, just 100 Watts and a resistor-matched wire in a tree. In 2007, I had hundreds of QSOs on SSB and various digital modes that happened via ALE. A lot of really nice operators and good QSOs. For every station you see transmitting on ALE, there are probably 5 or 10 other stations at that moment just scanning ALE on receive, that you never see until they decide to make a transmission. Perhaps they are just monitoring a single frequency and will use it if they need it or if they are involved in an Emcomm event. Whatever the reason, or whatever the method, the system is versatile and available 24/7. That's the way it is meant to work. A good portion of the daily ham radio ALE communications activity can easily be tracked on the web, limited mostly to reports from the HFN Pilot Stations that are on the air at that time: http://hflink.net/qso Although ALE has been in use in ham radio for the past decade, and in an organized way since 2001, the Ham Radio Global High Frequency Network (HFN) only just began in June 2007. That is the "killer app" that has led so many operators to add ALE capability to their stations. Even so, ALE is still a rather new thing for most hams, and many are just recently getting their stations set up for it. The advice I give to operators is: If you are not interested in contests, don't operate the contest. If you are not interested in ALE, don't operate ALE. But if you are interested in ALE, there's a whole new world waiting for you. Right now, interest in ALE is increasing dramatically, and HFLINK membership is growing at about 50 new members per week. http://hflink.com 73 Bonnie KQ6XA
