Hi Art. Was somewhat intrigued by your efforts. I have been running
both two and three element quads for some thirty years now. Have stayed
with the Gem Quad due to their spider spreader system that may help
somewhat with spacing on the three bands. The exception was my first
one which was a W2AU quad in 1966.. Who remembers that one? It used
bamboo spreaders and cost thirty eight dollars plus shipping. I lost
it in a snow storm just before the 1968 ARRL DX contest in March.
Anyway, enough of the drivel! Now my comments.
For what its worth. I have followed the manufacturers suggestions, cut
the wire and fought to get it up in the air and on top the tower.
Usually I won. A couple of summers ago I decided to take down my three
element tri band gem quad and refurbish it. While on the ground I built
a jig to get it up off the ground and using a scary twenty foot fruit
pickers ladder I proceeded to cut wire, add wire, solder stuff, separate
feed lines, check each element, fuss with the shorting stubs, check
resonance, impedance at the feed points, added a balun, and went on ad
noisome until I finally managed to fall off the ladder, it going one way
and me the other from about the fifteen foot level. I broke three
spreaders, most of the wire was busted up and I spent about a week and a
half watching tv on the couch until I could begin to move around again.
Further, I didn't bother picking up the wire that was laying around in
the lower lot and finally when the guy showed up to mow the lot (very
high and dry grass) he managed to set the field on fire with the sparks
from the mower blade contacting the wires still laying on the ground.
Fortunately the Fire Department is only about five minutes from the
house!
I must tell you that while fussing with the antenna over a couple of
weeks on the jig, before damn nearly killing myself I came to the
conclusion that trying to tune a multi band quad is an exercise in
futility. I would strongly recommend you follow the manufacturers
suggestions and put it in the air. They do work better, I think, than a
tri band beam and you won't have corona eating up the ends of your
antenna if you move to Ecuador.
My only piece of advice with thirty plus years of quad use is to feed
each driven element separately. (make a note of this comment and throw
the rest of this story away)
Last weekend, using this at 65 feet during the WPX I had four hundred
plus european Q's on twenty alone and worked everything I heard. Over
700K points on twenty, I was HP all band. Just put it up and enjoy it.
73 Van K7VS
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