[RTTY] RTTY contesing and MixW

[Andrew J. O'Brien]

I am a registered CT and Writelog user and thus have some experience using
good contesting software.  For the WAE RTTY contest I thought I would try
out the beta module for WAE that Nick made available for MixW users
(especially since my MMTTY plug in for Writelog does not work!).  I have
never used MixW for contesting before.

I am happy to report that is works quite well. I really like the auto
capturing of the received exchange. It is fun to see the RST and serial
number just automatically insert themselves into the log.  You , of course,
have to watch to make sure the auto copied exchange is correct but so far
only one serial number was incorrect.

I ran into one problem, I had the "statistics" window open that displayed my
score.  I noticed that I did not have a few things set up in the contest
module (like default RST).  I went back into the contest configure module
and after I did that ...the scoring in "statistics"  started over at zero.
I am not sure if it is possible to have MixW re-calculate the score

I am intrigued about the possibilities that MixW's contesting provides.  I
notice that it is very easy to import an ADIF file and convert it to a
Cabrillo file , or even take just parts of a log (by date for instance) and
convert it to a Cabrillo file.  This would allow people who just want to use
Zakanaka or DigiPan for casual contesting to easily put their log into a
format for emailing to the contest organizers.  This  , as far as I can
tell, would not score the log...but the log is otherwise all set for sending
in.

RTTY contesting with MixW was good as far as RTTY copy was concerned, I
think MixW copied better than the RTTYRite in Writelog and certainly is much
better graphically displayed than in RTTYRITE.  I have not compared Mix's
copy ability to MMTTY lately, but MMTTY has been my favourite RTTY program
for some time now.

I find the macros/buffers to be easier to set up than Writelog and there are
more available too.  You don't have to rely on function keys in MixW,
buffers are all one mouse click away.

Contesting with MixW does not give you bandmaps, QSO rates, mult spotting
via a cluster, partial callsign recognition, and many of the goodies in
Writelog but is does give the basics for casual contesters, and works well.

Andy KB2EOQ