Maybe its trying to tell Me something!

Ok, so I really thought I was prepared and had a good working setup for the CQWW Rtty contest. I was excited to be using My new Yaesu Ft-950 and had made several contacts and figured I was good to go. I use AFSK for RTTY and have a simple homemade isolated interface I use for PSK31,SSTV and RTTY. It has level control for both Transmit and Receive, red LED to indicate PTT activated and its connected to an old computer switchbox so its easily used with different radios. My second radio is a Yaesu FT-857 and both also have a CAT interface to My shack PC.
Friday night at Our house is family movie night and I very seldom miss participating. I always think about when the girls are bigger and won't enjoy spending time with Us....so We watched part one of"Dances with Wolves" before I had a chance for the contest.
I use MMTTY and N1MM and the first time I tried RTTY contesting it took quite a bit to get it working. Setting up N1MM first , use the"configure" menu setting soundcard type, mode to AFSK and make sure the path leads to MMTY.exe.You also need to set com port for your type radio and lastly use "setup MMTTY" to set TX com port for sending. Notice two com ports, Com one is to My homemade interface for PTT and com two is the CAT interface hence the radio type attached to com two.
Open N1MM , setup contest and MMTTY and the"RTTY engine" should be brought up also, if not go to "window" menu in N1MM and click "digital interface". You should see static on the waterfall and tuning around,espcially during a contest, see RTTY signals and hear the "diddle" sound.
So that is a very basic explanation for the setup, using My Ft-950 I started to make S & P QSO's and was off to a good start. Ten contacts later, after snagging P49X- smile,smile, the contacts abruply stopped. No matter what I tried, DX,North America, anyone,anywhere, I was decoding OK but getting no replies. At first i didn't realize something was wrong,but as more time went by and the dry spell increased it slowly dawned on Me-- what the hey??. ...Restart the Program,restart the PC, turn off and on radio. Play with the interface, try everything besides switching radios, until i finally gave up for the night. Maybe tomorrow the light bulb would pop on in My head!!
Next day... .well the weather was wayyy too nice to spend time contesting. I started and finished many projects till supper. After that I was too tired to even fight with a non working setup, maybe Sunday!
OK-repeat of the day before with the weather,the work, until finally several hours before contest end I made it back to the basement,determined to rack up some points. A quick assessment of the situation steared Me towards the old standby FT-857. Fairly simple to get it ready, except now the CAT control was only partially working! Oh well, at least contacts were being made, I stayed focused on 20m for a single band attempt, but in hindsight I should have tried for as many multipliers as possible!
I did quit before the contest end for Supper and a beer! Today I tried to find information on problems with the Ft-950 and RTTY but found no definitive answers. I think I need to copy all the changes in the menus from default and do a master reset. Hope that helps!
73-- Tim