[LCC] CQ WW RTTY

[Mark, K5ER]

Wow,
	Now I see why this is among the fastest growing contest modes. Just worked 
my very first rtty contest and had a blast. Thanks to all you guys for the 
help and answering questions, and especially Don for the great web site and 
for talking me through some of the details on my hybrid set-up.
	I knew that if I was going to do this, I wanted to be SO2R. I also decided 
that I wanted to use only one computer, just like the other modes. While 
AFSK only took a few minutes to set up, at the serious prompting of several 
of you, I decided to go FSK to use the filtering in the Icom rigs. That was 
GREAT advice, guys and it made A LOT of difference. With only one spare 
port on the computer, it did cause me to work for it. I modified my 
DX-Doubler by adding means to get audio from both radios SIMULTANEOUSLY to 
the stereo sound card for decoding. I also added a serial port to the DXD 
so I could toggle a pin to send the FSK signal to the second rig. FSK for 
the first rig was sent through the parallel cable that runs the DXD. I was 
able to use the existing rig control cables to handle the PTT keying. Took 
several days to plan, build and test, but it came together the day before 
the contest. The hardest part was getting the software to understand what I 
was doing hardware wise - or was it understanding the limitations of the 
software and making the hardware work with what the software would output? 
Either way, I out-patienced them both and it finally worked the way I 
wanted it to.
	I only managed two rtty contacts before the contest, but everything looked 
like it was going to play correctly, and it did. I had never even listened 
to a rtty contest before, and even though I blew both EU openings, I 
managed to bag 523 contacts and end up with just over 351K points. I heard 
club members NX8G, AA5AU, N5VU, KN5O, W5RU, and K1DW. Hope to see you guys 
often on this mode in the future, and thanks for the encouragement.

73,
Mark, K5ER