[hfsig] Is there anyone out there?

[Charles Brain]

Hello Stéphane and all,

Nice to hear from you again Stéphane.
Yes I can remember your experiments all those years ago.

As far as ALE is concerned Steve N2CKH handles the day to day Amateur
version of PC-ALE whereas I work on the 'special projects' version of the program.

At the beginning of the year I had my first link protected ALE contact (not on the
Amateur bands). My code does not support the time server commands instead it
either uses a GPS or NET time for synchronisation. So it can now do AL0,AL1 and AL2.

I have also been playing with AES encryption rather than the 3DES I was using
previously for the contents of emails.

As well as that I have been working on getting the Email interface to work properly.
So far it can only report linkup and link down events and the reception of AMD
messages. The interface is via a standard email tool like Outlook Express or
Eudora.

It is nice to be able to send and receive AMDs using an old PocketPC. I have a dedicated
P.C running ALE with an Icom IC7200. The P.C has a WiFi dongle in it (it is remote to the house).
I just send an email to xxx at ale.sta and it establishes the link sends the AMD and then clears
if there is no further traffic.

I have started adding a full blown email system where it sends the emails by establishing the link, then handing
off to a MIL-STD 188-110A modem to send the actual email. Although all the code is in there I have
not had time to do any testing. That project is on hold at the moment, mainly because it is so complicated to
set up the test harness. I need to be able to see both ends of the link to debug problems.

The last thing I did was to add code that emails out any new received soundings to an email address, I am not
quite finished doing that yet.

THE ALE software can act either as a server, i.e it looks like an email server and you can connect directly to it
via Eudora (etc) or it can act like a client. As a client you give it the details of your email account and it can log in
and send/receive messages via the internet so effectively if you have email access you can use your ALE station.
Mind you if you have email access you probably don't need your ALE station.

So I have been deep into the SMTP/POP3 protocols and the various authentication schemes they use.

As far as my website is concerned it is back up in a reduced form. The ISP had a hard disk failure.
They don't give a guarantee to data integrity on their free web services and as I no longer have to pay
them anything I can't really complain.

I will eventually release the 'special version' code to Steve so he can add the legal bits to PC-ALE.

If anyone wants to follow me I am on Twitter @G4GUO

Good luck with your new business/life Stéphane.

- Charles






----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stéphane Rivière" <stephane at rochebrune.org>
To: "TAPR HF Modes SIG Mailing List" <hfsig at tapr.org>
Sent: Monday, October 12, 2009 11:27 PM
Subject: Re: [hfsig] Is there anyone out there?


> Nice to hear you all... Hi Charles too... I remember 10 years ago, we