This past weekend I worked the EA RTTY Contest. Multipliers were Spanish provinces, DXCC countries, and US/VE call areas. My effort was very casual due to a number of tasks to complete around the house as well as attending the Lone Star DX Association lunch meeting. Managed to work 101 contacts across all bands 80 to 10. However, 15 meters was the real workhorse band.

Ran N1MM along with MMTTY and this time had 2Tone set up as receive window. 2Tone really did a great job on the hard to decode signals. Time and again it would be able to decode the tough ones while MMTTY printed gibberish. Nice to have that extra help.

If I worked you during the contest, thanks for your QSO(s). 73.

Ran the North American QSO Party RTTY version on Saturday. Managed to spend the maximum 10 hours, more on that later. This was the first time I put in play N1MM Logger and MMTTY demodulator software on a Windows computer.

It worked very well. On the other hand, my fingers didn’t work so well, pun intended. Actually, it was probably my brain. First issue was confusing the RUMped version of ESM (Enter Sends Messages) with the N1MM version. RUMped allows you to Enter repeatedly during Search and Pounce until you bounce out of the call sign window and into the exchange. N1MM automatically enters the exchange as soon as you hit Enter, whether the station comes back to you or not. That caused me to send AGN? AGN? to a few stations. The other snag was the click on exchange in the RTTY window to populated the exchange fields. It’s one click, not double-click. That snag got me  bouncing around the keyboard a few times and a generally slow QSO exchange. Oh well. Still learning.

Score wise I managed 335 QSO’s and 130 multipliers. Worked 45 of the 50 states. But it may be that I nudged past the 10 hours on the air. When I submitted my log the contest robot noted that my category would be changed from Single to Multi-Op. I wouldn’t think that my painstaking S&P with just a few runs would lead them to believe that I was using assistance. However, I may have a minute or two over the 10 hour limit. I’ve asked the contest organizer what might be at work. We’ll see what I learn. [Mark, K6UFO, responded right away to note that I'd submitted the log labeled as SOAB-Assisted. He corrected it and all is well --- I should have checked my N1MM settings more closely --- Thanks Mark!]

All in all, a successful launch of my new Windows based ham shack! Yet another adventure in ham radio. 73

I ran the CQ WPX RTTY contest this weekend. Got on the air for right at 13 hours of the total 48 hours of the entire contest. Fairly casual effort and didn’t lose any sleep. Still managed to make 398 QSOs and 218 different call sign prefixes for just over 180,000 points.

I ran my Elecraft K3 at 100 watts into my two verticals. Didn’t put up the Moxon. Ran RUMped along with Cocoa Modem. RUMped locked up about six times during the contest. Left one contact just hanging there while I tried to restart things. Did just acquire a surplus Windows desktop computer for $10. Getting ready to fire that up and put WriteLog on it and a number of other ham radio items. Should get me into the mainstream of amateur radio software. More news on that one soon.

If you worked me during the contest, thanks so much for the QSO.