Abstract: An automatic link establishment (ALE) method of establishing a link between two or more HF radios or stations, and an apparatus using the same, are disclosed. The invention provides a transmission protocol that allows HF radios to rapidly exchange call data to enable the first radio and second radio to have knowledge of the frequency propagating characteristics used for communication. The method includes transmitting 24 bit words from the first station to the second station and vice-a-versa in the CALL. The words include a three bit preamble, at least about 3 bits of data to be transmitted from the second station to the first station, and a compressed representation of three characters of the address of at least one of the stations. The number of words transmitted during the CALL, RESPONSE and ACKNOWLEDGE are greatly reduced from the protocol defined in MIL-STD-188-141A Notice 2.