The building
The Steel City ARC is one of the few clubs in Western Pennsylvania that owns its own property and building. The clubhouse sits just west of Carnegie at 1,247 feet, high enough for a full 360-degree radiation pattern. Six steel towers and a couple of wooden poles carry the antennas.
Inside there are two radio rooms. The HF room at the front holds the HF stations and the main antenna patch panel; each radio has a computer for logging or digital modes such as PSK31, JT-65 and SSTV. The VHF room at the back holds the emergency communications position, a fully battery-backed station built around an Icom IC-9100 covering HF, 6 m, 2 m and 70 cm, plus the Remote 1 station, a Kenwood TS-2000 covering HF through 23 cm.
There is also a full kitchen big enough to cook a meal in, a remodeled bathroom, and independent water and propane supplies.
Power and security
If commercial power fails, a propane-fired 15 kW generator carries the whole building, radios and air conditioning included. On Field Day we run everything from the generator with no outside power at all. Between the outage and generator start, the emergency station and repeaters run on batteries, and the network, file server and EchoLink machines are on UPS.
Members in good standing get a keycard for 24/7 access. If you want to operate at 2 AM, be our guest. The building is alarmed with inside and outside video surveillance and automatic floodlights.
Radios
Icom IC-7610 and Flex 6600
The club's newest HF transceivers.
Icom IC-756PROIII
32-bit floating-point DSP, real-time spectrum scope, large color display. A long-time favorite at the club.
Icom IC-9100
All-in-one HF / 6 m / 2 m / 70 cm with D-STAR and satellite capability. The heart of the battery-backed emergency station.
Kenwood TS-590SG
100 W HF and 6 m with a down-conversion receiver and narrow roofing filter. Doubles as Remote 2.
Kenwood TS-2000
HF through 23 cm. Remote 1, available to members from anywhere.
Yaesu FT-991
All-band, all-mode MF/HF/VHF/UHF with C4FM System Fusion.
Yaesu FTM-400DR
144/430 MHz dual-band C4FM / FM mobile, the club's Fusion radio.
SDRplay RSP2
Wideband software-defined receiver, 1 kHz to 2 GHz, also behind our public online receiver.
Plus a Drake 4C and a shelf of older gear for the nostalgic. Members can also reach three of the stations from home; see remote stations.
Antennas
| Antenna | Bands (meters) |
|---|---|
| Mosley PRO-67C | 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, 12, 10 |
| Mosley S-402-M monoband | 40 |
| NA4RR Hex Beam | 40, 20, 17, 15, 12, 10, 6 |
| Hy-Gain EXP-14 with 40 m add-on (south tri-bander) | 40, 20, 15, 10 |
| Mosley TA-33M (north tri-bander) | 20, 15, 10 |
| Hy-Gain AV-18HT HyTower vertical | 160, 80, 40, 20, 15, 10 |
| Alpha Delta dipole | 80, 40, 20, 15, 10 |
| 80 m NVIS dipole (donated by N3LL) | 80 |
| 60 m dipole (built by the tech committee) | 60 |
| Beams for VHF/UHF | 6 m, 2 m, 70 cm, 23 cm |
| Repeater tower | VHF and UHF verticals |
Members: the antenna matrix and patch panel instructions explain which radio reaches which antenna.
Come see it
The easiest way to see all of this is to show up on a Wednesday night. Directions are here.