[NCC] CQ WPX RTTY Contest Coming UP

[Ray Fallen]

*"Whippings will continue...
 until morale improves !"

      - paraphrased from a Siesta Key T-shirt


Good morning and I hope this finds everybody warm and safe...

At the NCC meeting in January, there was great interest shown in
having our club be more active in RTTY contesting in 2011.  Prior
to the meeting, I even convinced 'AZ to get up and running for the
ARRL RTTY Roundup.  Tom, K3LR and I (and maybe some others)
made around 600 q's in a demonstration effort.  We didn't blow
anything up and a good time was had by all.

The CQ WW WPX Contest RTTY is coming up the weekend of
February 12-13, 2011 from 0000Z to 2359Z.  This would be a good
opportunity for those of you who haven't previously tried RTTY
contesting (or RTTY for that matter) to get on and get your feet
wet and throw a few points in the pot for NCC.

Rules and regs for the contest are at:  www.cqwpxrtty.com

As I'm sure most of you know, both Win-Test and N1MM use
the MMTTY RTTY Engine software and are great RTTY contesting
programs.  My advice, if you are starting from scratch, would
be to take a look at AA5AU's web page on downloading and
installing the MMTTY program on your shack computer:

http://www.aa5au.com/gettingstarted/rtty_downloadmmtty.htm

This site has links to the MMTTY web site and plenty of information
that will help you get up and running on MMTTY.  It is vitally
important that you get MMTTY cookin' stand-alone before running
it "under" your logging program.  I have tried it the other way
and it only leads to fear and loathing.

Another great site is AA5AU's:  www.rttycontesting.com

It is important to note that the MMTTY stand-alone program is
not quite the same as the MMTTY-Engine which  is linked
with Win-Test or N1MM.  For some reason or other, MMTTY
default installs the "engine" in the same sub-directory as the
stand-alone program and it can drive you nuts.  At K8AZ...
we installed the "engine" in a separate sub-directory.  YMMV.

As to hardware...there are lots of choices.  K8AZ is using the Signalink
interface (available from DXEngineering)...WT8C loves his Rascal...
WW3S and I are partial to the microHam interfaces...but they all work
great...and they all have pretty good on-line support.  Of course, you ORG's
can roll your own....there are plenty of schematics available.

As to human resources in NCC...WW3S is a pretty active RTTY contester,
WT8C is on a lot, I've even heard KQ8M and W8WTS in a pile-up or two.
I'm sure any of us would be willing to help you work through any issues
you might have.

If you are using the N1MM software, make sure you sign up for the
N1MM-Digital reflector.  N2AMG, K3CT and others really do a tremendous
job supporting that side of the program.

Here's a link to the N1MM digital documentation page:

http://n1mm.hamdocs.com/tiki-index.php?page=Digital+modes&structure=All+Documentation

If you plan on getting on for the contest...and it will be a busy one,
please drop me a note and make sure when you submit your log to
indicate North Coast Contesters as your club.

See you next weekend...

73
ND8L

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