The W3KWH tower antenna project will be on Monday 12/10/2018 between 7 and 8 am. We will need a few people to help with the raising. Tnx de, Tech Committee
Category Archives: Club Happenings
Flex Radio Demo
There will be a Flex Radio demo this Wednesday night Oct 24th at the Steel City club house at 7:00 PM promptly. Bob Green, N3RDG will be bringing up his Flex Radio Maestro unit to the club which will be hooked up at his Flex 6400 radio back at his house. The radio which will be live on the air and after the demo members will get a chance to operate it. Bob will be showing us how it is used and all the unique features of of an SDR radio. Bob will not only show us the Maestro interface but also the interface that can be brought up on the Laptop or Computer screen.
Mosley Update
Here is the latest update for the Mosley antenna. The technical committee has been busy putting things together. And finally all the elements have been mounted to the boom. We steel need to level things up and do the finally element spacing measurements but its together enough to get a good size of the final product.
Click on image for full size.
Hmm, it seem we ended up with four extra pieces. Does anyone know where these go?
Mosley Pro 67 coming to W3KWH
New Rotor – Green Heron
click image for full size picture
Several weeks ago it was notice that the rotor on our south tower TriBander had frozen up again. After being refurbish several times already it was decided to just replace the rotor with a new one. It was a good decision due to the fact of when Matt climb the tower to remove it the rotor felled apart in his hands. Due to the research of done for the Mosley antenna it was decided to get a Green Heron rotor package. This controller has several smart features including starting the rotation slowly and ramping up the speed as it turns. Plus a nice safety feature of the controller not seeing any movement it will cut the power and show an error message. It has one more fancy feature in it ive better feedback to the computer. The little N1MM program will now show you what direction it is pointing and you can watch it move with a small pointer inside the program. Green Heron program is even fancier in it show a map with an overlay of the signal pattern on the map and you can click and drag the overlay to what ever country you want to work. So come on up for the social meeting and try it out. Special Thanks goes out to Matt, KB3PJW and Karl, WA3VXJ for doing all the tower work in the summer heat.
click on image for full size picture
Sign up for the Annual Corn Roast
August 12, 2018 @ 1:00 PM
2018 Steel City Annual Corn Roast Webpage
BRING CHAIRS ! ! BRING CHAIRS ! ! BRING CHAIRS ! !
BRING CHAIRS ! ! BRING CHAIRS ! ! BRING CHAIRS ! !
Meet your new antenna’s
Here is Steel City big plans for summer. We are going to need several work parties to get all the work done, but to get you excited about the antenna improvements at the club house here are some of the details for the new HF antennas. The Mosley antenna will be mounted on the replacement tower to the right of the club house. And the Hex Beam antenna is going to be mounted on the far tower down by the cell tower. The club house will now go from 2 HF beam antenna’s to 4 beam HF antenna’s with two of the beam being able to do 40 meters. Combine with our HyTower vertical we will have some major power on the HF bands.
Mosley PRO-67-C-3 Transmits on the follow bands 10, 12, 15, 17, 20, 30, 40 Meter antenna with 3 Elements on 12, 15, 17, 20 , 40 meters and 4 Elements on 10 meters, and it has a rotatable dipole on 30 meters. With a 3 inch OD Heavy Wall Boom
One antenna with actual resonant elements, 4 elements on 10, 3 elements on 12, 3 elements on 15, 3 elements on 17, 3 elements on 20, 1 element on 30 Meters, and
3 elements on 40 Meters.
| Model | PRO-67-C-3 |
| Frequency, MHz | 28, 24, 21, 18, 14, 10, 7 |
| Power Rating, watts CW | 2500 |
| Power Rating, watts SSB | 5000 |
| Power Rating, AM/FM | 600 |
| Power Rating, RTTY/AMTOR | 600 |
| VSWR at frequency | 1.0/1 to 1.6/1 |
| Forward Gain, dBd / Elements on 10 m | 9.3 / 4 |
| Forward Gain, dBd / Elements on 12 m | 8.3 / 3 |
| Forward Gain, dBd / Elements on 15 m | 8.3 / 3 |
| Forward Gain, dBd / Elements on 17 m | 8.3 / 3 |
| Forward Gain, dBd / Elements on 20 m | 8.2 / 3 |
| Forward Gain, dBd / Elements on 30 m | 0.0 / 1 |
| Forward Gain, dBd / Elements on 40 m | 6.8 / 3 |
| Front-to-Back Ratio, dB 10 m | 24 |
| Front-to-Back Ratio, dB 12 m | 15 |
| Front-to-Back Ratio, dB 15 m | 24 |
| Front-to-Back Ratio, dB 17 m | 25 |
| Front-to-Back Ratio, dB 20 m | 24 |
| Front-to-Back Ratio, dB 30 m | 0 |
| Front-to-Back Ratio, dB 40 m | 24 |
| Boom Length | 24 ft / 7.32 m |
| Maximum Element Length | 43.75 ft / 13.34 m |
| Turning Radius | 23.67 ft / 7.21 m |
| Mast Mount Hardware (equipped) | 2 in / 5.08 cm |
| Assembled Weight | 145 lbs / 65.77 kg |
| Wind Surface Area | 12.1 sq ft / 1.12 sq m |
| Wind Load, EIA Standard 80 MPH | 330 lbs / 149.69 kg |
| Warranty | 2 years |
| Recommended Coax | RG-8 / RG-213 |
DX Engineering HEXX Beam Antenna
DX Engineering Mark 2 HEXX Beam Antennas offer gain and front-to-back performance that will exceed your expectations! Their unique shape is much smaller, better balanced, and has been reported to receive less noise than typical beams. Even at 22 feet across and 4 feet tall, their turning radius is less than a two element 20 meter Yagi, while offering several enhanced operating characteristics. They handle well over legal limit power on all five bands, so there is no power restriction as on competing antennas. DX Engineering HEXX Beams are very efficient, with full length elements and no lossy coils or traps, requiring no matching network so they are ready for a single 50 ohm coax feed at the top of the center post, as recommended by the engineer. They are light, easy-to-handle antennas that can be rotated with a light duty rotator, and they perform really well–even when mounted in the clear only 20 to 30 ft. above the ground.
DXE Part Number:DXE-HEXX-5TAP-2
HF Beam Antenna Type: Hexagonal
HF Beam Antenna Band Coverage:20, 17, 15, 12, 10 meters
HF Beam Antenna Elements:10
HF Beam Element Material:Insulated wire
Antenna Power Rating:2,500 W
Beam Antenna Turning Radius:11.00 ft.
Wind Surface Area:5.050 sq. ft.
Feedpoint Impedance:50 ohm
Antenna Feedline Connection Type:UHF female, SO-239
Antenna Weight:24.90 lbs.
Beam Antenna Gain:5.3 dBi
Beam Antenna F/B (dB):Over 20.0 dB
2018 Infrastructure Improvements
The major infrastructure improvements schedule for this summer 2018 project has been approved at this month business meeting. A special technical committee was set up to review our antenna infrastructure. Knowing that we were going to need a bucket truck to put up the 440 antenna that was purchase last year the membership wanted to know what other work was going to be need while we had the truck on site. The far tower down by the cell tower has been empty for quite a while. Plus there has alway been a need for additional HF antennas with WARC capabilities. Also the 70 foot tower to the right of the club house is getting close to its end of life. Before it fails it was decided to replace it with the Rohn tower sections that we already had with only a new base and top section needed to be purchase. Also already purchased is two new VHF and UHF yagi antennas. With the recent Red Cross and ARRL ECOMM sessions at the club house a need for a VHF and UHF vertical beam antenna to work surrounding repeater was needed This was needed due to our current VHF & UHF beam antennas were all being horizontal polarized. The final antenna is a discone antenna that will be run to the work bench area. This will not only let us receive VHF & UHF on this wide band antenna but transmit to. Below is the complete list of improvements scheduled to be done this year, and the work starts this next week!
- Mount the new 440 antenna on the repeater tower
- Take down the old 70 foot tower and replace it with the Rohn tower
- Move the 6 meter yagi to the VHF tower
- Mount the new Mosley_PRO-67-C antenna on the Rohn tower
- Mount a new DX Engineering HEXX Beam on the far tower by the cell tower.
- Mount new VHF & UHF vertical beam antennas to the club house building
- Mount a Discone antenna to he new Rohn tower
So by the end of the summer we should have six new antennas at the Steel City club house grounds. The work starts this next week on Wednesday June 27th with weather permitting the 70 foot tower is going to be lowered. This needs to be done first so that a new base can be fabricated for the new Rohn tower.
Pictures of Scout Demo
Here was our setup at the event. From the left to the right we had Karls remote set up decoding morse code. My IC820 VHF/UHF radio. The clubs IC-756Pro and finally Nates Kenwood 8330
The Scouts were have their district meeting and awards night and us “vendors” were at the other end of the pavilion picnic
That our very own Nate tuning up his good old rig using the ladder as a antenna
Here is Christine having some club scout working the VHF radio and talk to Chris, Art, and Joe via the radio. 
Showing off the club banner
Scout Leadership Demo Thursday Night
Our club was invited by the Boy Scout to give a demo at Clever Park on Thursday night from 6:30 pm to around 8:00. The help we need now is it would be nice to have people standing by on the Steel City 2 Meter repeater incase we need to make some contacts. We will also try to get on 10 or 20 meters if we can get the HF radio working that is a little bit more iffy due to the noise issues we found at the park. We might make some HF contact via the remote station if we cant get the HF radio to work. Nate was contact and he pull Karl, Walt, and myself into the demo. Now we wont turn anyone away if you want to come to Clever Park but we really are going to try to make some demo contact via the radios.
Again any help you can give would be helpful via the radios…
Christine
Park Location: 6:30pm Thursday
Clever Park
115 Robinson Pool Dr, McKees Rocks, PA 15136
Google Maps Link:
https://goo.gl/maps/SYPUXTCkA192