ALE FAQ

ALE

ALE lets you view ALE transmissions on your iPad or iPhone. Just set it next to the radio's speaker, tune in an ALE frequency, and watch the decodes.

To use this app, you need to feed the audio output from a your radio into the device. You can do this via one of several ways:

Set the device near the radio's speaker to pick up the audio. While easy to do, this is not ideal, as background noise can interfere with the audio, causing garbled decodes.
Plug headphones into the radio, and set one earphone near the mic. I find that with good quality headphones, this can work extremely well.
Use the microphone input jack of your device, by obtaining an appopriate cable and connecting the radio's line level output to the microphone input.
With the Camera Connection Kit, you can plug a USB sound input device into the iPad, and use a patch cable between it and the radio's audio output. This is by far the best solution.

You can use the volume indicator in the upper right corner to verify that audio is getting into your device, and that the volume level is appropriate.

If you are running iOS 7 or later, be sure to give the app permission to use the microphone. If you denied permission, you can always give it again by following these steps:

Open Settings app and go to "Privacy"
Select "Microphone" to get a list of all apps that have requested access to the microphone, and to control which apps have access to the microphone

If you're looking for a radio to use with the app, there are many different types to choose from. Take a look at our listing of radios to use with your app, to see several, along with some suggestions on how to choose a radio.

Want to clear the text? Give your iPad a shake!

Turning on Record in the Setup will store decodes to a text file, that you can move to your computer via iTunes sharing. You can also select which fiel to record to, or review recordings from within the app.

Turning in Display all decodes will cause each received message to be displayed, including duplicates.

Here are some details on directly connecting an audio line source to your iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch

Email your comments and questions to support@blackcatsystems.com

Last modified November 12, 2012