[RTTY] My first RTTY contest

[Michael Rapp]

Thanks for the warm welcome all!

And yep, I am using N1MM....thanks to Don and his wonderful site for
getting me up and running.  Back in May, I was doing AFSK but the wide
bandwidth allowing adjacent signals to come in made copying difficult.  I
then bought and built a W3YY FSK interface for my FT-950 and it made all
the difference in the world being able to use the FT-950's narrow filters
during CQ WW.

I kept it on 500 Hz for most of the contest, but when an adjacent signal
started to interfere, I'd dial it down to 400 Hz or even 300 Hz and copy
was much better.  (Also, I noticed that in MMTTY the amplitude of the
signal increased when I used a narrower filter...so the FT-950 must be
doing some amplification of the signal as the filter gets narrower.)

I downloaded 2Tone last night and set it up as a secondary receive window
(again, following Don's excellent instructions.)   I spent a lot of time
early on in the contest watching the exchanges that seemed the most
efficient to me and modeled my macros after those (and I'm happy that they
turned out nearly identical to the example Hank used in the Courtesy
thread).  Now I'm playing with various N1MM window arrangements.

73,


On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 12:45 AM, Gary AL9A <al9a at mtaonline.net> wrote:

> Michael,
>
> Glad to see you have been bitten by the RTTY bug and survived!  Thanks for
> the 40M QSO BTW.
>
> If you want to really have fun in some RTTY contests, check out the rules
> for these two.
>
> The Makrothen Contest - http://home.arcor.de/waldemar.**
> kebsch/The_Makrothen_Contest/**TMC_Rules.html<http://home.arcor.de/waldemar.kebsch/The_Makrothen_Contest/TMC_Rules.html>.
> The score is based on the distance between grid squares.  Second full
> weekend in October, this year the 12th and 13th.
>
> WAE DX RTTY Contest - http://www.darc.de/referate/**
> dx/contest/waedc/en/rules/<http://www.darc.de/referate/dx/contest/waedc/en/rules/>.
>  I don't know what software you are running, but you will need a good
> contest logging program for this one to help you manage the QTC exchanges.
>  MMTTY by itself just won't cut it for this one.  There are several good
> loggers out there that have a WAE contest module, so start early and be
> ready for some serious fun. Second full weekend in November, the 9th and
> 10th.
>
> Hope to print you in both contests.
>
> 73,
> Gary AL9A
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Michael Rapp
> Sent: October 02, 2013 11:51 AM
>
> To: rtty at contesting.com
> Subject: [RTTY] My first RTTY contest
>
> Hi all,
>
> Having just finished up my first quasi-real contest effort, I felt like
> reporting my reflections on it.
>
> That was fun!
>
> I'm a relatively new licensee (May of 2012) and have been spending my time
> primarily sampling all the various activities in ham radio.  I tried a few
> SSB contests and while I enjoyed them somewhat, the constant yelling into
> the mic really wasn't working for me.
>
> I stumbled into RTTY earlier this year and did some practice contacts
> during the VOLTA contest back in May, but life intervened and I had to take
> a break from ham radio over the summer and am just now getting back into
> it.
>
> I approached the CW WW RTTY contest solely as an opportunity to increase my
> DX count; however, after only tuning the bands for a short time, I found
> myself really enjoying the contest!
>
> I'm not exactly sure what it was but I've come to love the sound of the
> didles and the cadence of an efficient exchange.  I like the visual
> challenge of tuning the X-Y scope in MMTTY and pulling out call signs from
> the phantom characters that populate a weak exchange.  Plus the
> catch-in-the-breath moment after you send you call….will the runner come
> back to someone else or will he come back to me (and have my call right)?
> And I suppose not having to constantly speak into a mic helped, too.
>
> I operated far longer than I ever intended and in fact lost track of time
> at one point, which I suppose is a fairly good indicator that I was having
> fun.
>
> I ever got up the courage to run a bit during the last two hours of the
> contest to get some practice doing that.
>
> I honestly can't wait for the next RTTY contest and it looks like I don't
> have long to wait….the NCJ NA RTTY Sprint is coming up shortly.  Looks like
> my next major step is to get more familiar with N1MM.  (And get some 80
> meters capability, which I don't have at the moment.)
>
> --
> /*/-=[Michael / KT5MR]-=/*/
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-- 
/*/-=[Michael]-=/*/