I recently purchased two of the 309L-3 ALE controllers from Mike Murphy in San Diego as I wanted to learn more about how ALE would work. As normal, without documentation, it is a bit of a challenge to make them work.

The 309L series was the first generation of ALE technology. Collins marketed it under than name of "SelScan" in 1980 and it seems to be the original basis for Federal Standard 1045. However, we are unable to confirm this. The 309L series while designed for use on aircraft HF systems, did find it way into a number of land based systems. It was the basis of the US Coast Guard ALE system. There was also a matching unit for HF-80 series which is described elsewhere in this site. We understand that the data rate was 300 bits per second.

So far what I found is that the 309L-3 unit has three connectors. The use of them is as follows.

J1 Power (DC powered)

J2 Control the associated Collins Receiver-Transmitter such as the 671 series radio

J3 Programming port ("Fill")

J1 uses these pins:

J2 has many connections

J3 has all pins in use. Note – while this appears to look like a normal military audio connector, it is not. It is actually smaller.

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309M-1 Series ALE

System Part Number Equipment
				Type Description 
ALE 523-0773444 		NTN Selscan Automatic HF Comm. System Pilot Guide 
ALE 523-0776622 		NTN ALE Control Processor 309M-1 Int. Maintenance 
ALE 622-6792-001 514A-12 	Control 
ALE 622-6792-002 514A-12 	Control 
ALE 622-6792-003 514A-12 	Control 
ALE 622-6883-001 994C-1 	Mount, Hard 
ALE 622-6883-002 994C-1 	ALE Mount, Shock Isolated 
ALE 622-9628-005 309M-1 	ALE Processor 
ALE 751-0236-002 NTN 		HF Control Connector Kit 
ALE 752-7615-001 NTN 		ALE Connector Kit 
ALE 752-7616-001 NTN 		Conn. Kit, 514A-12/13 
 

If anyone has information on this unit, it would be great.