#CQWW DX RTTY contest experiment

Event: CQWW DX RTTY 2019

Section:  Single Operator Low Power  All Band 

Logger: N1MM+ newest version

RTTY engine: MMTTY & 2Tone

Station: Icom IC-7300 70W

Antenna: Multiband Inverted-V 2x20m ladderline fed, apex @12m agl

Yet again I have to write I don't like RTTY contests. However, after the experiments done last weekend it is a huge difference operating with a IC-7300 instead of my old IC-706.

After a small discussion about the contest PA4O Peter recommended I should try 2 receivers for RTTY. The standard MMTTY and 2Tone. His experience was that 2Tone sometimes decodes better as MMTTY. This was my first real contest with the IC-7300 and I saw it as a technical challenge to make everything work like it should for a proper RTTY contest station.

First of all the IC-7300 needs to communicate with N1MM+ at a higher speed level as the CAT
control I use with HRD. The higher speed setting is mainly to be shure the spectrum display in N1MM+ is working. So I had to make a different setting profiles with the help of WT2P Cedrick's description on his website. It also describes the RTTY FSK setup with the help of EXTFSK in MMTTY. I was smart enough to do this already on the 7th of this month.

Remembering all the setup challenges I had with the IC-706 over the past years I didn't expect it to work immidiatly, but it did! That was quite a relief! I made some QSOs and after a while I concluded everything worked rock stable. Time to do the second experiment, the setup of 2Tone. I found a good tutorial on rttycontesting.com. I got it working instantly. I have to say, the Icom IC-7300 makes live of a hamradio operator a lot easier....

But what are my experiences with this setup?
Well, first of all my transmit signal was better (read clean) since I use FSK RTTY now, but I don't think it gave me extra QSOs?

Screenshot from the internal decoder

The Icom IC-7300 has a special RTTY Tone Pass Filter (TPF) that is really good, I used it all the time and I'm shure I could receive signals that I would not be able to receive with the IC-706.

I used 3 RTTY decoders: MMTTY, 2Tone and the IC-7300 internal encoder. Personal experience...well sometimes 2Tone was better, sometimes MMTTY and sometimes the internal RTTY decoder. Overall MMTTY was best in my opinion.

The N1MM+ spectrum display experience. Unfortunately almost useless. The only thing you can see is if a station that has been spotted can be heard at your receiver. But on a contest busy band there are so many spots and signals you can't see much actually....

Screenshot from my computer. A bit messy....that's called experimenting. Click to see the big picture.

I only participated a few hours on Sunday. Started on 20m and 15m. Searching for interesting DX. And found some. Only S&P style. I did some running on 40m and 80m in the evening. 40m didn't work out. 80m always does. The last 15 minutes of my effort I decided to do some S&P on 80m. I worked remote from the living room and only controlled with the up/down arrows. I have to say that I found a station every 6-10 clicks on the button, that's 1 station every 600-1000Hz.

Well, I consider this experiment as successful. I tried everything I wanted to experiment with and it all works. I will never get a good score in a RTTY contest just because I don't like it. Besides that I don't think you will get a good score with S&P. You need a good antenna, good propagation and....well I hate to write it but I think you need a bit of power at least for running. And then you need to get spotted and have a pile-up that does not end within a few minutes. And you need time, a lot of time. PA4O did participate for over 32 hours and ended up with 1220 QSO, that's a lot more as me (and probabely many others).

Above a map from most of the contacts. I operated just over 5 hours. ODX was YB1ELP (Indonesia, 11223km).