Rats! I just hit the wrong key and sent an unintended message. Wish I could delete it. And before that I had written a lengthy comment which Yahoo seems to have lost. So I'll try again.
Seems like there are several aspects to ALE One is the notion of going through a list of frequencies in hopes of finding one that works for the station(s) you are trying to contact. Another is the set of MIL STD modems, codecs, and protocols that implement the system as we know it. Now the frequency jumping part is something we could call "HF Radio for Dummies" and I don't mean Dummies as a pejorative but rather in the sense that has sold all those yellow books. It means you can get right to the point of communicating without first having to learn a lot of arcane stuff about propagation modes and times and seasons. And even the experts are sometimes fooled by propagation, so ALE may succeed at times when the experts tell you it could not. As for the MIL STD part, it's good that these things are being standardized, and we know the military spares no expense in search of the best communication technology. Still, I wonder if these modems and codecs and protocols are necessarily the best for the amateur service, considering the legal restrictions we operate under, the kinds of equipment we have to use, and the operating conditions we encounter. (Rhetorical question: Separate the frequency scanning from the modem/codec. What if we had a system that could scan through a list of frequencies but used PSK instead of the MIL STD modem/codec?) Another aspect is the use of ALE as a communication medium in its own right versus the use of ALE to find a usable channel for further communication in some other mode. Speaking only for myself, I'm a keyboard mode operator so I don't get excited about using ALE to initiate a contact that will be continued in SSB voice. And I can't see myself using ALE to establish a contact and then saying, "let's QSY to such-and-such a frequency and continue in PSK63." Finally, it seems ALE is best suited to establishing communication with a particular station, or with a group of stations having a common interest. This probably affects the number of hams who are interested in trying it. I used to keep a weekly sked with a friend; ALE might have been helpful to us in finding the best frequency to use on any given evening. Back in the late 1950s I was in a RTTY roundtable of friends practically every night. ALE would probably not have been helpful then. Some hams chase DX, some contest, some are interested in emergency services, some do it all. ALE serves some of these operating styles and not others.
