[RTTY] Decoder thoughts after WPX

[Tim Shoppa]

Like many recent big RTTY contests, I was running at least one each of
MMTTY, 2Tone, and Gritty in WPX.

I found myself using 2Tone a little more for piecing together calllsigns,
and MMTTY a little less when piecing together callsigns. Not really sure
why. 2Tone still has a slight but obvious delay.

2Tone was a real winner when pulling out weak signals next to strong guys
who started CQ'ing as little as 250 Hz away from me. Several times I was
able to hold a run frequency as long as 15 or 20 minutes before deciding
that the strong guy CQ'ing 250Hz away from me just had no clue I was even
there.

Gritty was just superlative at pulling out numeric serial numbers
especially when repeated several times. Lots of times the more marginal
RTTY signals, the callsign did not get over the squelch threshold that
would start Gritty decoding. But Gritty would kick in when it saw a "599"
followed by some numbers. And the accuracy of what it decoded was truly
superior. I think Gritty somehow recognizes the repeat of the exchange and
starts working across the repeats to put together the right exchange.

Is there some way to disable or lower the threshold of Gritty squelch so it
will at least try to decode with more marginal signals? I always turn
squelch off with the other decoders.

Tim N3QE