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
