CQ WW WPX RTTY Contest

Posted on by February 10, 2014
Toes our Maine Coon Cat

Toes our Maine Coon Cat

I finally made my first ever RTTY contacts during the CQ Worldwide WPX RTTY contest this past weekend.  The SignaLink, N1MM and MTTY worked flawlessly during the contest. Working RTTY is certainly a lot different experience than operating CW or SSB.  RTTY signals are more challenging to tune but once correctly tuned the text magically flows across the screen.

During the contest just clicking on the various pieces of information in the MTTY receive window (callsign and exchange) automatically populates the correct fields in N1MM.  You then send your own information, wait for a TU from the other station and hit return to move on to the next contact.  This was very enjoyable.  After a while you get into the “zone” and the time just flies by.

During the contest I noticed that our Maine Coon cat is not a fan of RTTY.  Normally, “Toes” will hang around in the shack when I am operating CW.  In fact he seems to enjoy winding around my legs or laying on the bed next to my shack and observing the activity.  He didn’t come near the shack while I was operating RTTY this weekend.  Maybe the weird RTTY tones hurt his ears or perhaps cats understand CW?  I vote for the latter!  In the future I need to watch what I send, because “Toes” may be listening in.   Here is a summary of my results:

Operator Category : SINGLE-OP, All Band, High Power, RTTY

ARRL Section : IN

Club/Team : SOCIETY OF MIDWEST CONTESTERS

Band QSOs Points Prefixes
14 56 103 46
21 46 95 30
28 53 100 34
Total 145 298 110

Score:  32,780

Good Hamming but Poor Antenna Repair Weather

Posted on by February 9, 2014
Iceberg in Our Pond

Iceberg in Our Pond

The weather this winter has been good for hamming but not good for antenna work. Our winter has had one of the most sustained cold periods I can remember.

The photo at the right shows the ice in our 1/2 acre pond.  The iceberg in the middle was formed by the water falling from our floating fountain and freezing on the frozen pond surface.  This is the first time I have seen this much ice build up around the fountain.  Normally the fountain will keep an 8 to 10 foot diameter area open around the fountain.  Right now the only open area is from our air pump which is keep about 3-5 foot area open (right side of photo).

Since late December we have had a cyclic weather pattern of snow followed by sub-zero temperatures followed by warming to the mid-20’s followed by more snow and more sub-zero weather.  This weather pattern has been quite unusual for us.  Our more typical winter would be a sudden cold snap in late December or early January with one or two 6-8″ snow falls followed by a warm spell in January or February.  We would also sometimes have a snow fall sometime in March followed by a gradual warming trend until Spring arrives in April.  Of course the sustained cold is also evident in my heating bill!  I’m hoping for an early Spring because I’ve had enough winter for this year.

73,

Fred, KC9QQ

First RTTY Contacts – CQ WW WPX RTTY

Posted on by February 9, 2014

Well I finally had a chance to test my RTTY setup. I decided making a few contacts in the CQ WW WPX RTTY contest would be a good test of my RTTY hardware and software. For Hardware I’m using a Tigertronic’s SignaLink USB interfaced to my ICOM 756 Pro III.  For software I am using N1MM with MTTY and 2Tone setup in the Digital Interface.

It took a little time to determine the best arrangement of all the N1MM windows on my monitor because the MTTY and 2Tone take up quite a bit of screen space. After I had the N1MM working with MTTY and 2Tone I downloaded a key file for the CQ WW WPX RTTY contest.

I also sent out a request for pointers to fellow hams in the Society of Midwest Contesters.  Several experienced RTTY operators sent this rookie some key pointers.  I’ve summarized some of them below:

  1. Watch your ALC level
    Do not allow the ALC to activate because it can distort your RTTY signal; making it hard for others to copy.
  2. De-rate your output power
    RTTY has a 100% duty cycle when you are transmitting.  This can stress transceiver and amplifier output stages.  It is probably not a problem to operate a full power if you are doing Search and Pounce, but if you are going to try running a frequency it is best to reduce your power a bit unless you are certain your transceiver and amplifier can handle 100% duty cycle. It is advanced that you check your transceiver and amplifier manuals for their recommendations.  In my case my setup should be able to handle the 100% duty cycle, but I chose to operate at 50% power just keep the stress low on everything in case I made some sort of rookier mistake.
  3. Keep Your Macros Short
    Don’t over do the length of macros in a contest.  You can send your call twice when calling a station and send his call followed by the report twice and your call again for the exchange.  You can always re-send the information if it is missed the first time.  The default N1MM RTTY macros for the CQ WW WPX contest are reasonably short but can be tweaked a reduce them a little more.
  4. Listen for a While Before You Jump Into the Contest
    This was valuable input because when I first start tuning station during the contest it was a very confusing.  After I had spent a half hour listening to other stations operating I had a good feel for properly tuning in stations and had a better feel for the flow of the exchanges.
  5. Never Run Compression and don’t over drive the audio
    Make sure that audio compression is turned OFF.  Having it on will make it hard to make contacts.  Also make sure your microphone gain is set just high enough to provide a clean audio signal.  Keep the audio low enough that the ALC is NEVER triggered.
  6. Add a space or CR at the start and end of your macros.
    This helps to insure that your signal will be properly synchronized to the receiving end.
  7. Make Sure Your Not Operating Upside Down
    One of the most common transmit problems is transmitting inversely or up-side-down. RTTY is polarity sensitive. Transmitting inverted means you are sending a Mark when you should be sending a Space and vice versa. This can happen if you are using AFSK or FSK. With AFSK, it could mean you are using the wrong sideband. LSB is standard but USB can be used if you have the polarity correct. Yet, most stations who send inverted are using the wrong sideband. If you are set up to transmit in LSB, sending RTTY while in USB will result in your transmit being inverted.The above information was from AA5AU’s excellent article on operating RTTY which can be found here: http://www.aa5au.com/GettingStartedOnRtty.pdf

I would like to thank all of my fellow Society of Midwest Contesters for their helpful advice for this new RTTY operator.

After following through on the above advice I finally got on the air and made my first RTTY contacts last night during the CQ WW WPX contest.  I was only on about two hours and did not set any records for rate, but I did make over 30 contacts.  I plan to get on again to day and see if I can improve my skill.  I’ll let everyone know how I ended up.

73,

Fred, KC9QQ