[80m] 4 square

Sun, 6 Jan 2002 21:57:37 -0500

I agree, Bill, that the foursquares often do not do as well
on shorter paths as horizontally polarized antennas. Sometimes
people running dipoles at 65 feet beat me out to Europe. The
angle for that path is just too high most of the time. But on
the longer paths, such as to JT1CO and other Asians, the foursquares
do a good job.

Good luck with getting the remote setup working again.

73,
Stan, W4AG

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On
Behalf Of Bill Fisher, W4AN
Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2002 7:18 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [80m] 4 square

Hi all.  I have a 4-square made of Rohn-25 tower and aluminum
stingers.  It is an elevated system (16 feet).  My QTH is on a hilltop
that drops off quite fast.  For example, the 4-square is centered on the
hilltop, and some of the radials are as high as 50' off the ground at
their tips.  

The system has worked fairly well for me, but isn't great to Europe.  For
example, K4XS in Florida with 4 element quad fixed on Europe at 160' is
constinently 10DB louder than me.  W8JI with a flat top dipole at 150' is
normally 1 s-unit louder.  

On the other hand, my 4-square works great on long haul stuff like that
JT1CO last week.  Many examples over the years have enforced this
fact.  

One thing that I did this year that seemed to make a big difference on the
pattern of my array was detuning all of the towers around the 4-square.  A
friend of mine (W4OC) does this kind of thing for a living, so he offered
to help.  We used a tunable field strength meter that Don had and tuned a
shunt capacitor and wire on the tower for minimum radiated power measured
on the FS meter.  The 4-square now has much more F/B than before, and is
starting to act like other 4-square I have used with ground mounted
radials and free of interaction from nearby towers.  

The past two seasons I was able to work my station remotely over a
telephone remote link, but a lightning strike over the summer took out
most of the remote hardware.  I'm just about ready to put it back on the
air again.  Hope to see you all on the band when I do.

73

Bill Fisher, W4AN
http://www.w4an.com

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