Murphy visits RTTY contest!

The CQ WW RTTY contest was last weekend and I planned a very part time participation. THe weather was expected to be exceptional and We had Relatives visiting so I planned on several hours Friday night at the start and possibly some weekend mornings.The rest of the time I knew would be busy but I thought it was enough to achieve a goal of 20-50k points.
I was a little concerned when Friday night rolled around and I hadn't even checked My RTTY setup since the last contest I participated in many months before.After arriving home from work,eating supper,taking care of some chores I finally made it down to the shack about 20 minutes before the start at 0000 UTC.Luckily all seemed well and I could recieve and transmit into a dummy load just fine. I set up the contest in N1MM ,My contest logging program, and resisted the urge to download the latest revision.
Out of the chute I snagged a VK from Australia on 10 meters- He later gave Me a confirmation in LOTW ( wow-thought I already had a confirmation with Australia!!)in the next hours I also logged several Hawaii stations plus Uraguay,US Virgin islands,Brazil and Grenada. Not too bad but I was not adding stations to the log at any good rate.Heard alot including J5/OL8R from Guinea-Bissau and PZ5RA from Suriname who was heard here very srtong but they just CQed and didn't hear Me.
It had been a long week so against My better judgement I shut down for the night and planned to rise early to try and fit in some extra time before Relative actitity would begin.I hadn't achieved My QSO goal for Friday night but assumed I could make up for it Saturday!
Up early Saturday, breakfast,coffee and after taking care some small chores ,headed down to the shack and turned on radios and PC. Lots of signals on 40m so that would be My starting point but--wait?? Whats this? Why is N1MM constantly keying the radio? This has happened before and the culprit was My homemade soundcard interface. I proceeded to take the interface apart and started a visual inspection. Not seeing any obvious issues, turned My attention to cabling,com port,etc. Time was ticking by with no resolution so I tried restarting PC and power cycling the radio because at this point was getting desparate!
When I first assembled a interface for My soundcard I decided to include a backup of sorts. I ran associated cable thru an RS232 switchbox so i could use two separate radios although not at the same time. I tried switching and setting up the N1MM and spare radio for a RTTY contest. Still keying the radio so problem is not radio related but PC,program or interface. Next I tried the old Digipan program for PSK31 to see if i could narrow the problem down. Yes--No constant key so probably not a com port issue or interface.
That would leave either N1MM or the RTTY engine MTTY. First I decided to try downloading latest Revision of N1MM but that was no help and I was out of time---Bummer. That also would mean My contesting was done for the day.
Sumday morning I again tried to figure out the problem but had very limited time.I was hearing many signals on 10m so was near frantic to find a solution. I printed out the contest results so far and set them aside and bit the bullet and reiniated N1MM. It didn't wipe out the entire config so I ended up totally reinstalling the program. I finished this just before I had to quit but it appeared to fix the issue.wouldn't really know until i had more time to configure the program.
I did eventually prove the new downloaded N1MM worked flawlessy!! So what happened? I think My PC which is an older Dell running Windows XP and haveing second party Com board installed (plus My homemade interface?) maybe caused the program either on power down or start up to corrupt the program. Some bit latched and wouldn't clear?? Don't know !! I do know I missed one of My favorite contests and had to submit a paltry sized log.
My concluding thoughts are basically something good did happen. I've decided to redo My shack and make it easier to get at radios and PC and associated equipment.Oh and its also time to upgrade My PC!!
73----Tim