[NLRS] Anyone using Quads?

[Jon Platt]

John, regarding a rover antenna for 6m, its my belief that the largest
"gain" for your rover station can be had by elevating your antenna above
ground.   A dipole at 20' may outperform a 3 ele yagi (or 2 ele quad) that
is mounted at 10 to 12' and its mechanically a lot lot simpler.   This is
especially true for "ground wave" or tropo contacts where you need to have a
low angle of radiation.   For 6m roving, don't count out the lowly dipole
mounted up as high as you can get it.   On the other hand, if you have a 30'
crank-up tower mounted on your rover, go for the yagi !

Also, a loop yagi is a quad .... the full wave loops are circles instead of
squares, diamonds, etc.   Your point is a good one.   I suspect that the
reason that we see loop yagi's dominate in the 902 to 3456 range rather than
yagis is that the element dimensions are less critical (than those of a
yagi) and thus are easier to mass produce.   At these frequencies the
mechanical issues are not an issue.   The loop yagi design allows for mass
production (low cost) of good performing UHF antennas.

At VHF frequencies I would think that you should be able to get good
performance out of a mono-band quad similar to that of a mono-band yagi
boom-length for boom-length but because of the mechanical complexities, why
bother when the current yagi designs are so good (ie, M^2, Directive
Systems).

73, Jon
W0ZQ.