John,
Your message below is easy to summarize succinctly, thanks.
At 09:48 PM 1/10/2008, you wrote:
>
>Chris , ZL1BOE
>
>you will be told by others that ALE is widely
>used to set up QSOs and QSYs using the one
>line message ability . You will also be told
>that it is used widely for keyboard to keyboard
>QSOs and that there are thousands of Hams using
>ALE ( last figure I heard was 6000) . These are
>folks who are using PCALE, who have aggressively
>set aside frequencies for ALE use in all bands,
>and are promoting ALE as the answer to emergency communications.
FALSE
>
>Granted, PCALE, in its MARS form may be a great
>piece of software to pass messages from overseas
TRUE
NOTE: MARS does not make use of ALE for OCONUS traffic relay.
> but that ability is certainly not evident on the ham bands.
FALSE
>
>The reality is that there are likely under 50
>hams active with PCALE worldwide, those using
>PCALE spend most of the time sounding , with
>little , if any message traffic passed, and no
>QSOs. PCALE does not work very well into the
>noise, and is certainly not user friendly when
>setting up a rig and computer to run the
>program. Beyond using the sounding function
>there appears not to be much interest in running
>nets, or exploring emergency communications aspect of PCALE.
FALSE
>
>ALE400 (multiPSK) might be closer to your needs
>since it is narrow band and works well into the
>noise. It can be readily used for soundings,
>file transfer, and is a pleasure to use for
>digital QSOs, keyboard to keyboard. The author
>is constantly working on the software, and
>appears to be moving closer to the Holy Grail of
>being able to pass messages and files from HF to
>the internet. It is simple to install, simple to
>use, (although the screen can be a little
>overwhelming at first) .There is a plan afoot
>which would see some extensive cross Canada
>testing of this mode to determine its
>suitability for emergency communications.
TRUE
>
>There are some other software out there to look
>at. NBEMS has promise, but , since it uses BPSK
>for the most part, suffers from multipath
>flutter and other ozone maladies. The authors
>state that its intention was to run over
>VHF/UHF, and , while I havent tried it, would
>probably work very well. This software is also
>under active development so will be interesting
>to see what other capabilities it will have.
TRUE
>
>RFSM8000 gets very little mention on these
>reflectors, since hams in the USA cannot exceed
>300baud speed. Dimitry and his team have posted
>the latest version which looks interesting , but
>havent tried it, but is something we can run
>here in Canada on most bands except 30m.(
>bandwidth issues rather than speed) It
>apparently has the ability to pass traffic to
>and from the internet from HF, using a sound card modem.
TRUE
>
>So much software, so little time
.
SO TRUE
/s/ Steve, N2CKH
>
>73s John
>VE5MU
>