[TowerTalk] Gem Quad Back in Production

[Ward Silver]

I had a two-element Gem for nearly ten years and it worked very well in a good location.  Quads seem to do slightly better than Yagis at very low angles - very important for low-power/QRP guys like me :-)

Anyway - the way I chose to feed the elements was with quarter-wave sections of RG-62/U (92 ohms) to an RCS-8V, 5-position remote coax switch.  At the feedpoint, to keep the solid wire (both the elements and the coax center conductor) from breaking, I used a small piece of glass-epoxy perfboard with brass screw terminals and tie-wrapped the coax to it.  All of the coax feed lines were bundled together.  The bundle was then tied off to the central spider with nylon cord.  That kept the whole assembly relatively stable and I had no more coax or element breakage.  SWR was less than 1.5:1 on all five bands.

Bondo and a spare piece of fiberglass rod work well as an element repair technique.  Don't ask me how I know this :-)

73, Ward N0AX