[RTTY] RTTY Beginnger

[Bill, W6WRT]

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

On Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:44:35 -0500, "Jeffrey Demers"
<jdemers at Wakefly.com> wrote:

>
>I use a Yaesu FT-857 and newer laptop that has plenty of USB ports but
>no other ports to speak of.  I need a simple software / hardware
>solution to get on RTTY to start making some contacts.  If you have tips
>that can get me going quickly, on the cheap and with my existing
>equipment I'd like to hear them.

REPLY:

Probably the best tutorial available is AA5AU's page at
http://www.aa5au.com/rtty.html

Many RTTY'ers use the MMTTY program as their basic means of
transmitting and receiving RTTY. Once you get that up and running,
there are other programs you can add to it for contesting and logging
such as N1MM Logger and WriteLog for contesting and the DX Labs suite
for general logging and ragchewing. 

I would suggest downloading MMTTY first and get that running. Make a
few QSOs to be sure your hardware is ok and then you can use MMTTY
directly in the contest, or if you want to jump in headfirst, add
either N1MM or Writelog for increased efficiency. MMTTY, N1MM Logger
and DX Labs are free, WriteLog has a modest fee. I use all of them and
they are all excellent programs.

Welcome to RTTY and please feel free to ask questions here. This is
one of the oldest ham radio reflectors and has lots of experienced
folks willing to help.

73, Bill W6WRT