I have been using a 4 element on a 30 foot boom for more than 20
years and spreader wire was the only consistent problem. Regardless
of what you use about every four years a spreader wire is going to
break. I used 7 strand hard drawn copper. To stabilize the spreader
corners over wrap this area with a foot long single strand of copper
but NEVER SOLDER anything but the feed point. Any place the wire is
soldered it WILL break. I did solder an "eye" connector on the end at
the feed point but I over wrapped the feed point out about a foot in
both directions with a single copper strand to prevent it from
flexing at the joint. I tried some of the new flexible weave type
wire and it was broken in less than a year.
My quad was a 5 band 4 element all fed separately thru a switch that
grounded unused bands. I replaced it with a SteppIR last year as at
my age I was tired of taking the big quad down every four year for a
rebuild. It used almost a full 1000' spool of wire to rebuild but
they are a great antenna.
Your mileage may vary
73, Ed w4ep
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 18:07:02 +0300
From: "Kostas sv1dpi" <sv1dpi@otenet.gr>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Wire for Quad
To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Message-ID: <005b01c7b283$7e6533d0$0201a8c0@sv1dpi>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original
the wire for the quad must have much strength and must have NOT much weight.
These are what we want. The wire of LBA is perfect for this purpose but the
strong point of this antenna is the way it hungs up the wire from the
spreaders. Copy this way and not fasten the wire. Someone may have a photo
here or can describe it. Sorry but my english doesn't allow it.
Kostas sv1dpi
>From: "Jim Brown" <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
>To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
>Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 4:32 PM
...snip...
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