Category Archives: Club Happenings

For Sale – ICOM IC-756 Pro III

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Image result for ICOM IC-756 PRO III

Attention Club Members: We are selling the Icom IC-756 Pro III at a special price to any Steel City Club members.  Please check your email for the club email about the member price.  And reach out to Karl WA3VXJ {at} hotmail {dit} com if you have any questions about this radio. Members can pick this up at a lower price before we post it to Ebay.  Once we sell this radio the club will be upgrading to the Icom 7610 transceiver.

FYI: Da Bums

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Updated……………….

DST is in place and “DA BUM” will meet on this coming Monday (2nd Monday of the of the month) at KINGS on Neville Island. So 11:00 seems to work.

Don’t forget to check your “life safety” monitors; smoke, fire and CO alarms.

73 de w3svj

Introducing Remote 3 – SDR Play

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UPDATE: Today the Remote 3 computer was move out to the communication hut.  A separate dipole antenna that was donated by Karl WA3VXJ that was add to the repeater tower which is on antenna “A” input, and for antenna “B” input we have it hooked to the old Diamond repeater antenna.  The remote is now separated from any of the club house antennas. 

Since we replace the computer that was hooked up to the Remote 1 station that free up the old computer. While we were having issues with the ports on that old computer the computer itself had not died yet.  So the IT group decided to keep in functioning until it dies completely.  We have move the SDRPlay to the old computer and rename the computer to Remote 3.  It is using the same Teamviewer ID for the old remote 1 station and the only thing you need to do is click on “Communicate” and make sure “Computer Sounds” is checked.  Like you can see in the below picture.

Remote 1 – Update’s Done

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Hello Members,

The computer for Remote 1 has been update and now open for members use.  The Skype name stayed the same but the Teamviewer ID did change.  Operations is the same as before we still need to add some programs to the computer like FT-8 & SSTV.  If you didn’t make it up to the club house this past Wednesday and need the new Teamviewer sooner please email Karl or Christine.

W3KWH FT-8 Log

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                         W3KWH FT-8 Log

Wondering how popular the new digital mode FT-8 mode is getting?  We downloaded the logbook from the WSJTX program on just the Kenwood TS-590 rig.  This one radio had over 952 QSO with other FT-8 users from around the world. I have broken down the log by the different bands and have sorted the list by call sign.  I have also included the complete logbook in Excel format if you want to dig it down farther.

BAND    NUMBER OF QSO
6m                        88
10m                        9
15m                    154
17m                        2
20m                    172
40m                    351
80m                        2
160m                  157
Unknown Band    26

Total QSO           952

PDF of the logbook sorted by call sign

Complete raw logbook in Excel

 

2m Repeater – HIGH POWER

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Steel City 2m FM Repeater is now running HIGH POWER

Update 12/23/17
Today’s work party was very successful we discovered yet another bad jumper which has now been taken out of circulation. So here’s the update the 2 meter radio is now running on the amp with an output of 85 watts, and the noise is gone in fact it is sounding even better.  While tracking down the noise we temporary move the Fusion repeater down to two meter side and it was fun trying out two meter digital.  At this time the Kenwood is hooked back up so the controller and Echolink continue to work.

Since we moved the Fusion machine down temporary we decided hook the New Fusion DR-2X repeater back up to the 440 side.  Since we bought the new SWR meter we quickly found the bad jumper when the SWR hit 5 to 1.  Thinking that temporary antenna was the problem we hooked back up to the tower mount folded dipole antenna it too had the same bad SWR.  So then we swap out some jumper and found the bad one.  It wasn’t one of the ones that we got from that vendor it was an older cable. Once we swap the jumper out we found the folded dipole had a good SWR so we decided to leave it hooked up.  With the new repeater the DR-2X seem to have fixed the signal issues.  It is definitely hearing a lot better now.

So What Next:

  1. We need to buy some new jumpers.
  2. Hook up Wires-X to new Fusion DR-2X.
  3. Hook up the new 440 antenna on the tower.
  4. Fix the Astron power supply the positive power stud is getting loose.
  5. Get a better power distribution block for all the 12 volt accessories in the hut.
  6. Find how why the battery bank wont run the amp
  7. Add the fiber extension on the clubhouse side

Special Thanks:
Big thanks goes out to Karl, WA3VXJ and Joe, WB3AGB for coming out in the cold to lift repeaters and change out jumpers and to bounce suggestions back a forth.  Also Bobby, N3LL and Doug, W3HH for helping me track down a new Echolink issue and helping me set the levels. Finally thanks for all that gave us signal reports.

Your IT Gal,
Christine, N3LRG

UPDATE: 11/17/2017  Some noise started to leak though to the amp will be intermittent while we track the noise issue down…

11/15/2017
All Steel City members are request to test out our two meter repeater and give signal report back via the clubs email reflector.  This past Wednesday Karl and myself hooked the 2 meter amplifier back up to the clubs repeater.   We would like to get some signal report on how it is get out in our previous weak areas. Also please give feedback on any noise reports that you might hear on the repeater.  So lets see how far we can get out now!