John and group, There is minimal ALE activity here in North America. Maybe there are untold thousands of operators in other parts of the world but not here. For those who have been hams for any length of time and operated HF, it is obvious that the higher HF frequencies are not open very often. And the lower bands are mostly for evening use. That leaves mostly 20 meters as the prime daytime band. So monitoring 20 meters would give you an accurate sampling of the amount of traffic (or not) on ALE frequencies.
I have rarely, if ever, heard any actual traffic on ALE other that when I did some testing some months back. Some of us have done testing with wide 141A mode and it was not very effective in sending messages. It does require a fairly good signal. The narrow ALE 400 mode is dramatically better than 141A and the FAE 400 mode is even better and is competitive with many other sound card modes. Of course it is excellent for ARQ error free messaging or using for keyboard to keyboard error free chats which was something I have been wanting since my early experiences with Amtor and Clover II. We now have that. Unfortunately, there are not many hams who have an interest in doing that. While I no longer use the PC-ALE software, which does not support the new technology modes of ALE 400/FAE 400, Multipsk supports them and is my software of choice at this time. Some possibilities down the road are for improvements in NBEMS so that it can not only be used for emergency messaging, but also for day to day chat use and maybe even a BBS storage and retrieval. (Just thinking out loud here:) Perhaps it will add new modes or even the 8FSK50 FAE 400 mode which works so well under fairly difficult conditions but still has modest throughput. 73, Rick, KV9U John Bradley wrote: > > If the statement below is False, why are there not more call signs > showing up on the main ALE frequencies? > > I can leave my rig on 14109.5 or 10145.5 for 24 hours and only see, at > most 4 or 5 stations? Ditto for the ALE website > > At HFlink. And 99% of those are soundings. So where are the QSO’s and > the like? > > Who is up for testing the ability of PCALE to handle a standard test > document between 2 distant stations, compared to 141A or > > ALE400. Ditto for a file transfer? I can’t on PCALE since I can only > receive, since I have a problem getting the software to TX. > > Anyway , in the past I have told you guys at least 20 million times > not to exaggerate…… > > John > > VE5MU > Announce your digital presence via our Interactive Sked Page at http://www.obriensweb.com/sked DRCC contest info : http://www.obriensweb.com/drcc.htm Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
