YES I was able to get an understanding of it and sat here for 5 hours making contacts! So now I am getting the hang of it....made contacts all over using 30 watts. I will try again today but use less power, maybe 15 watts. I even went on 60 meters and made a bunch of contacts there. I got a list of frequencies where FT8 is used so I checked out the freqs on 20, 40, 60 and 80 meters. Pretty strong signals here. I also downloaded "Dimension 4" to keep computer clock accurate. Now I might want to explore some other modes, probably psk32 so thats another can 'o worms to open. Thanks for your help.Well Bob did you get it all sorted by now. I see you still blazing the trail on 20M FT8 4 hours later.
I am looking at MMTTY. It look's like an older program, and I am reading the manual....I can't find anything about using USB cable to serial port other than using usb adapters but they might not work with 5-bit data. I am using an IC 7300 radio with a double filtered USB cable. I have already installed the drivers for USB for the 7300 and it's working fine using fldigi and wsjtx for FT8. I got that far already. But still unsure of how MMTTY works wit modern equipment. I guess I can install MMTTY and see if I can get it to receive to start.FLDigi is designed to key your radio's transmitter and send an audio signal which your radio then transmits over the air. This works well for "sound card digital modes" like PSK31 or Olivia. It can also work with RTTY using AFSK (audio frequency shift keying). I suppose this would also work for CW transmitted as MCW (modulated continuous wave).
However, when you put most radios into CW mode, the radio is looking for on-off keying using a "send" or "PTT" command with no audio signal. When your radio transmits CW, it turns the transmitter on and off so that the carrier goes on and off. RTTY using FSK (frequency shift keying) is similar except that in addition to the "send" command, there will also be some sort of "shift" command that causes the radio to change the carrier frequency by the amount of frequency shift you are using, usually 170 Hz for amateur radio RTTY.
The problem here is that I don't think FLDigi understands how to do this on and off keying in order to modulate the carrier. As I said, it wants to key the radio and then send an audio signal which modulates the carrier. [I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.]
FLDigi can be used to decode CW and to decode RTTY and to send RTTY using AFSK. But, for sending CW or sending RTTY using FSK, you need another program like MRP40 for CW or MMTTY for RTTY.
I downloaded MMTTY and EXTFSK. I cant find out how to hook up to my radio. I am using IC 7300 with USB cable (CI-V) and everything works great doing FT8 with WSJTX.......I cant make sense out of the directions....Do I set my radio to "RTTY" or "LSB"???? I set it to receive RTTY and picking up loud rtty signal on 30 meters....but not getting anything back....I need help with audio interface cause I dont know if its set right. Not sure how to use EXTFSK. This might not be rtty signal but it sounds like it...freq. is 10.100.65.....but there are no mark & space tones in the meter, just 1 mark in middle.