[Antennas] Let's talk quads

[Billy Cox]

Hi John,

I miss my quads too <sigh> ... and went away from them, for
the same reasons ... stacking more antennas on the towers.

Over the years the biggest I ran was a 3L Gem Quad @ 60' and 
also other 2L Mosley quad on another 40' tower ... and some
other homebrew ideas with varying results ... <we'll NOT go
into how some of my crazy ideas ... uh, were crazy ideas ...>

My first concern is the 22' boom from the 7-2 going to be STRONG
enough for the 40m spreaders ... most 40m quads use 3" booms ...

The driven element on my 3L was roughly 1' to 3' away from the
tower due to how the spreaders ran ... I used individual feedlines,
and homebrew gamma matches ... so any detuning as to SWR
was taken care of ... I added a single support that ran from the
boom to each gamma match, to support the feedlines and stop
them from flexing so much in the wind ...  it looked like an   \

BTW ... I set the gamma matches using low power with small air
variables ... then I determined the rough value of capacitance
and used RG8 (213?) as the 'fixed gamma caps" as such coax
has roughly 29 pf per foot <rough estimate guys, it's been years>

That allowed me to use PL259s/etc and better WX-proofing that
trying to keep moisture out of a small box for the air variables ...

Adjustment to loop size ... wow, that was way before EZNEC and
other options ... I think I collected every data set I could, looked
for similar element spacings, crossed both my fingers and my eyes,
and went with "something" ... All loops were cut, no tuning stubs
and such <did that with some of my 'uh crazy ideas' ... Overall I was 
VERY pleased with the results ... tho 15m's F/B was not much, the 
apparent gain was useful ... today' there probably a better process
to arrive at a "cut and fit" set of loop sizes.

I'd go back and look at the various articles (seems like CQ mag ?)
that have been published over the years and get some better ideas.

One last point ... going from the 20/15/10 to 40/20/15/10 really adds
to issues of tower size, guy spacing, and a rotor that will hold up ... I
am not sure I'd put such a large antenna on Rohn 25g for example.

Just more areas to consider ...

73 Billy AA4NU