[NLRS] HF ALE

[Doug Reed]

I don't know much more about ALE than the fact it operates like an HF
sounder by continuously monitoring a list of known frequencies to
track soundings (beacons) by other stations and to listen for requests to
communicate with its own station. I don't remember what the schedule is for
how often it will TX its own ALE beacon but the idea is that it knows
who it has heard, what frequencies they were heard on and how strong
they were at that time. If you need to talk to that station, your
radio (or computer) knows where to look for them or will at least
start sending ALE beacons on a known frequency list asking the other
station to reply. The radios link and hunt around for the frequency
with the best signal and then alert the operator that connection has
been established.

The ham version of the protocol is PC-ALE and links can be found at
<http://www.n2ckh.com/PC_ALE_FORUM/>.
It requires a computer with sound card interface, and a supported HF
radio with a CAT interface for software control. A broadband HF
antenna is important since the radio is continually hopping bands from
80M to 10M, based on the frequency list you have running in the
software. If you only have a 40M dipole, it wouldn't work very well to
test ALE on 80M, 30M, 20M, 17M frequencies. But keep in mind that the
B&W is generally considered to be relatively low efficiency. If you
check <http://hflink.com/> and click the HFLINK News button you will
find enough info to explain the HF Interoperability Exercise (HFIE
2014) that Earl was referring to. You can also find results of the
"What antenna" poll they conducted if you want to see what antennas
different people are using.

And if you do go looking for a radio with built-in ALE ($$$$$$$$), you
need to be sure it is the latest-and-greatest version of ALE if you
want compatibility with current Federal standards, since the ALE
standard has changed several times and the older ALE boards are NOT
compatible with the newer versions. It will be far easier to use the
PC-ALE software to give your current radio ALE capability.

If you have an HF radio with sound-card digital mode interface, a
broadband antenna or ATU and a spare computer 1GHz or faster, you
could probably have PC-ALE up and running in an hour or less. It might
take several hours more if you want to understand what it is doing.
:-)  They do say they prefer a sound-card interface that doesn't use
VOX, so that may indicate the Signalink USB will have a problem with
ALE, I don't know.....

73, Doug Reed, N0NAS.