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What is Sounding?
In Amateur Radio ALE, a sounding is simply a 10 second ALE transmission of your callsign (station identification). A sounding is different from a beacon because the ALE station uses 2 way communications; and the ALE sounding transmission is part of a selective calling process for calling and actively maintaining communication with other stations in the global ham radio ALE net and individually.  The purpose of a sounding transmission is to establish communications with other stations in a net.

Why are Soundings Used?
The communication through soundings enables other ALE stations to know which frequencies or bands your station is active on.
When you first turn on your transceiver, you can send some soundings so that other stations will copy your transmissions, and then may selectively call you on the best channel, using the minimum number of call attempts.
The scanning ALE receiver listens to the soundings of other stations each time they are heard and stores them in memory with channels and times.

How Are Soundings Transmitted?
Soundings can be manually transmitted, or set by the operator to transmit scheduled soundings every hour. Usually, if repetitive soundings are set, when the ALE controller or radio is first turned on then there is a delay of a few minutes before the first soundings are transmitted.

Ham-Friendly ALE Soundings
In the ham radio ALE network, there are Pilot Stations in different areas of the world that send soundings 24/7. This system transmits sounding only on the Pilot Channels in the automatic station sub-bands, and this strategy forms part of the basis of ham-friendly ALE.

ALE Sounding Guidelines for Amateur Radio

1. As an Amateur Radio Operator, you are responsible for all transmissions of your station.

2.
Before sending soundings, or any transmission, listen carefully  to all your transmitting channels with your receiver. Avoid interference.

3. Pay attention
to accuracy when setting up your ALE system's sounding parameters.

4. Manual or attended soundings may be transmitted on any ALE channel, similar to CQ.


5. For repetitive or scheduled sounding, program your ALE to sound only on the designated Pilot Channels
marked PILOT in the Amateur Radio ALE Channel List, for your IARU/ITU Region, and within your license. There is one Pilot Channel per ham band in each Region.

6. Program your ALE controller to use TWS Sound if possible. Using TWS Sound increases the efficiency of ALE nets. 

7. The optimum duration of a sounding transmission is approximately 10 to 15 seconds. Test and verify your sounding transmission duration with your watch. A sounding transmission should NEVER be longer than 30 seconds!

8. The optimum repetitive sounding on a channel is about once every 60 minutes. Please DO NOT sound repetitively on a channel more than 2 times per hour.

9. The optimum scan rate is 1 or 2 channels per second. If you scan more than 10 channels, use 2 channels per second.


10. Check your transmitter operation and antenna system SWR regularly on every channel in your scan group!


11. Take care in programming your ALE controller (software) and transceiver. Test it carefully and verify it for proper operation on a dummy load before connecting your antenna.

12.  Use the Polite or Voice Detect or Channel Occupancy Check or Busy Detect feature of your ALE controller.


























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