[RTTY] Decoder thoughts after WPX

[pcooper]

Hi John, and the group,

A good question, and one that I was contemplating asking too!

I use both MMTTY (main decoder) with 2Tone as a clone.
For MMTTY, I have my own profile, which is a combination of others that have been mentioned in the past.


The TYPE is FIR, with a TAP of 72, LPF of 40 and AV set at 70. I also have the NOT set right in the middle of the two lines.
That has worked well for me, and decodes most stuff OK during the usual contest scenario.

Now, 2Tone is where my main queries lie, as I had a play about with the settings during WPX.
On the left there is a choice between Selective/Spread/Flat/Flutter.
During the contest, I found that more distant stations were better decoded with Flutter, whereas EU stations were much better with Selective. Flat seemed to miss as much - or more - than MMTTY whereas spread seemed poor at decoding even strong signals.
I have not yet learnt which is best for which type of scenario regarding 2Tone.
The help file only tells you that they each use a different type of filtering, so I guess you have to try each and see what works best at any given time.
With 2Tone, changing the filtering works very quickly, whereas in MMTTY, nothing gets decoded for several seconds while the changes are implemented.

On another note, I tried GRITTY during the contest, but that doesn't work if you have the rig filters set to anything other than wide open, which then hinders the ability of MMTTY/2Tone to decode stuff, especially when there is a very loud station nearby.
I did try working "split" on the same frequency, with GRITTY decoding the other VFO, with wide filters, but having three windows to look at is too much for my addled brain!

On the other hand, GRITTY is excellent for working weak DX, especially where they are working split. I can have GRITTY decode the main VFO, with MMTTY for TX on the other VFO.
Just not ideal for contesting.

It would be interesting to hear what others have found too.

73 de Phil GU0SUP