RadioBanter - ALE Basic Questions

Robert11 wrote:
Hello,

Have been seeing more and more lists with frequencies of various sorts
tagged
with being "ALE".

I understand that this signifies Automatic Link Establishment.

Questions:

a. Should I be able to hear these on a normal HF receiver ?

They sound like short water-dropping like sounds. When you have a output
on your receiver and hook that up to your sound in on your PC you can
get an ID of the sender, and the ID for the intended target as well,
making it more fun as you have an idea what you're listening too.

b. Are they AM as well as USB ? Or,...?

USB

c. Are they digital ?
(sometimes or all the times ?)

All the time!

ALE itself is nothing more then an automated way for a bunch of stations
around the world to know what frequency between any two of them will
give the best reception. They do so by sending out that watery tone to
each other on a list of frequencies at regular timed intervals, the
receiver then analyzes the signal and remembers which frequency is best
at that time for that station.

Actual communications between users of those stations can then be
*anything*. ALE is just a way to take away the trouble of finding
correct frequencies, after that the stations can use voice, digital
modes, encrypted or not, etc.

I'm not a die hard ALE listener, but I have been diving into it a little
lately just to find out what it is. For me personally its prolly not
something I will really dive into, as some people are, but at least I
know a bit about what it is right now.

Its in use by a wide range of organizations and companies. USA army has
a easy to catch ALE net, theres the XSS net which now seems to be
identified as UK army, but also African railway companies use it, etc. etc.

Finally, theres PC-ALE for decoding the signal on the PC. Personally I
had a hard time getting this one to work (to control my Kenwood R5000),
the MARS-ALE version of PC-ALE worked for me however. You don't need to
control your radio with it, but without control you can only listen to 1
frequency.

Hope this helped you a bit,
--
JeroenK