Let's say you have a basic setup with one radio and one RTTY window for transmit and receive that you are comfortable with. The best thing you can do to take your setup to the next level is learn how to create "clone" receive-only decoder windows.
By having more than one kind of decoder running you are giving your PC more ways to sort out the received signal into something intelligible. I run 4 additional receive-only windows per radio receiver, and I think W0YK runs even more. Often only one of those windows pulls out a clear decode when conditions are marginal. Avoiding repeats will go a long way towards improving your rate (and the RU is all about rate!) (Well, yeah, mults are important too.)
So how do you do this? By now you are probably tired of me and others saying it, but the single best resource for learning more about RTTY and RTTY contesting is appropriately:
Click on "Tutorials" and you will find tons useful information on how to best set up Writelog and N1MM for RTTY contesting. Under the Tutorials you will find instructions on how to get MMTTY and the 2Tone decoder installed and to set up the receive-only clones.
If you have any questions or problems along the way, come back here and we will try to sort it out.
While you are on the
rttycontesting.com site, you can also click on "Lagniappe" and you will find a wealth of contest writeups (invaluable!) and how-tos (like how to handle pileups and best practices for RTTY messages.) And learn what the heck "Lagniappe" means ;)
Have fun! jeff wk6i