POOR MAN'S QUAD

(If you aren't poor when you start, you will be.)


Thanks very much for the QSO, Fred. l'd like to talk with you more, but must QRT now.  I've been on for over an hour and I do have some things to do, so 73's and hope to meet you again.  This is FG7XL signing off and clear and leaving the air.  The soft French accent of Monique's voice slipped permanently away, leaving only background static, punctuated by a few calls from the diehards who never can bring themselves to believe that anyone could have the temerity to turn a receiver off, just because they had politely and firmly announced that this was their intention.

Soon only the static filled the speaker of my Drake 2-B.  I sat slumped in the chair, conjugating obscenities in every tense I could think of.  Oh, how I wanted that first contact with Guadaloupe Island!  Monique had been on ten meters for over an hour.  Her signal had gradually slipped as band conditions changed.  As the signal faded, I had grown more and more desperate, employing every technique my slim resources could muster.  My left hand vibrated with anticipation as I waited for the crucial sign-overs.  Only nanoseconds could have elapsed before I had turned the transmit switch on the HT-37 and blurted out my call sign.  Somehow there was always some jerk in the middle of his call letters when I started mine.  I tried tail-ending.  The cacophony of calls stopped momentarily and I jumped in like sly old Rennie the Fox.  Back on receive.  Another station is calling her with a 20 over 9 signal and capping it off by having the gall (or is it de Gaulle) to call in French.  Naturally, she was delighted to talk to him.

I sat there for fifteen minutes, gradually slipping into a state of torpor, which is my equivalent for deep thought.  It had been less than three months since I had been back on the air after an absence of fifteen years.  I had been a ham for over twenty-five years, and there were Novices who had logged more operating time than I.  My return had been a joy after all the years of intending to get back on the air and not quite making it.  I operated 75 phone to start.  Having three quarters of an acre of land eliminated any antenna space problems.  The 75 meter dipole was up fifty feet and gave good east-west transmission.  A friend had given me a Mosley trap vertical for the other bands.  He was the comptroller where I had worked and he had temporarily become interested in becoming a ham.  He had purchased a brand new Drake 2-B and the Mosley vertical.  He installed the vertical on his roof without any radials, and then compounded that oversight by shorting out the RG-58U at the base of the vertical.  He was disappointed with the performance of his receiver for some reason and quickly lost interest.  Subsequently I bought the Drake for two shares of stock in a glamorous defence conglomerate and $25 cash.  Some time later I accepted employment with said conglomerate and their stock promptly dropped to one-third of its former price.  I maintained this was the sheerest coincidence, but my friend never lets our occasional lunch pass without a hurt reference to the stock deal.  My rejoinder is that I sold him the stock, I didn't tell him to keep it.

Shortly after I had returned to the air I worked XE1CCW in Mexico City.  Gus was putting in a tremendous signal.  He said he was using a vertical on top of a flat-roofed home.  The vertical was mounted on a 4 ft cement pillar and had 64 radials!  He had put 16 radials for each of the four bands and they sloped down to the roof, making about a 110 degree angle to the mast.  Gus reported very low SWR and high signal-to-noise ratio on all bands.  My home is one of those long, low, California ranch types with a cedar shake roof of moderate pitch.  It was totally unsuited for a duplication of XE1CWW's installation.  Naturally, I attempted to duplicate his antenna.  Unfortunately I didn't have the right kind of wire.  A quick calculation of the length required indicated that I would need to refinance the home to pay for No. 12 copper.  Refusing to give up on that basis I found a large roll of No. 32 PE wire I had surplus from some warehouse.

Gus had said the more radials the better, so I cut twenty for each of the four bands.  I made an eight inch circle of No. 12 copper and began to solder one end of the eighty wires to the circle.  It takes a while to solder eighty wires.  I had conceived the result to look like the spokes of a wheel.  I dragged the entire mess up to the roof where I was confronted with a simple problem.  The house is 107 ft long, but only 30 ft wide.  The ten and fifteen meter radials wouldn't have posed any problem, if I could have unsnarled them from what had somehow become an extended Gordian knot.  I stood on the roof grasping one end of this unplanned cable, looking as though I were posing for the cover of one of the old Bell Telephone books.
Several hours later and only minutes away from a total nervous collapse, I gave up trying to sort       
out the radials and just laid them on the roof and tried to spread them around in some semblance of a circular pattern.  The forty meter radials dangled over the front and rear of the house.  I climbed down and went inside for a drink or two.

When I emerged an hour later the sun was just dipping into the west.  We were having one of those gorgeous California sunsets.  The sky glowed red.  It was beautiful.  I turned and looked at my house.  Every little curled and twisted piece of No. 32 wire had captured a glint of sunset.  It looked as though a giant spider had squatted over the place and disgorged a year's supply of metallic spider web.  "Oh, what the hell," I thought, "it didn't cost anything, and I only blew one weekend." Eventually most of the forty meter radials got pruned off with hedge shears.  It was this peerless contribution to the art of communications that had unsuccessfully transmitted my pleas for recognition to Monique.

I got up from the chair and walked outside.  I glared at the Mosley.  There must be a better way.  I quickly brushed aside the obvious, a cram course at the Berlitz School of Languages so I could call anyone in their native tongue.  How about those guys who always seemed to get through in spite of the pileup?  They said they were using QUAD antennas.  That's it.  I will build a QUAD antenna and then I also will get through any pileup with my barefoot HT-37.

I got Bill Orr's book, All About Quads, and poured over it until the pages were dog-eared.  It was the only definitive information available.  I began to dream of the DX I would work with my quad.  At that time I was working for a major space firm fifty miles from the QTH, so I had at least two and a half hours of driving time each day to devote to thinking about quads.  I spent ten hours a day thinking about quads.

After stopping at several rug emporiums I found that rugs no longer came rolled on bamboo poles but on cardboard tubes.  I called an outfit that made rattan furniture.  I got a quick answer.  "We don't have no bamboo for no goddammed antennas!"  I surmised I had just joined a large group of Los Angeles hams looking for bamboo.  Thwarted?  Not on your life!  Why not just buy a ready-made quad kit from one of the several outfits on the market?  Buy?  I shrank back from that notion like Dracula from a crucifix.  There must be a way.
One day at work, while I was supposed to be concerned with some business proposal, it came to me; a sudden inspiration.  All great ideas are inspirations, born of that magic amalgam of insight and sheer genius.  I could hardly wait for the coming weekend.  My idea?  Simplicity itself!  Just make the spreaders out of plastic pipe easily and cheaply obtainable at the local building supply house.

I began to expand on the concept during the next two days and nights. (When I'm in a creative mood time becomes meaningless.) I would use 3/4 in. pipe for the first ten feet and a reducing coupler down to 1/2 in. pipe for the remaining three feet.  I had laid a lot of plastic pipe in the lawns and had no trouble gluing it together with solvent.  I plunged on.  Cross couplers would be used to insure a perfect X. For a simple two element quad I would only need 80 ft of 3/4 in. pipe and 24 ft of 1/2 in. pipe, 8 couplers, 2 cross couplers and a can of solvent.

You must realize that with us creative types the thought is father to the deed, and I was waiting outside Builders' Emporium for opening hour Saturday morning.  Naturally the clod who runs the hardware section leaped to the conclusion that I was embarked on a sprinkler job and offered to show me the new pop-up heads.  I favoured him with a patronizing smile and allowed as how my purchases were destined for a use far above such mundane matters as lawn watering.  I struggled through the cash register line clutching my lengths of plastic pipe with all of the protective zeal of a missionary carrying the native Chief's first born son toward the baptismal waters.  The bill was just under $15.  What a wonderful thing the human brain is!  To think I had conceived this idea and was about to witness its birth.  I rushed home and laid the pipe out in the back yard. 

With glue can and hacksaw I quickly assembled the eight spreaders.  The next step was childishly simple.  I inserted the ends of the 3/4 in. pipe into the cross fittings and cemented them in place.  My two quad sections were finished!  Less than an hour had elapsed!

I decided to transport the sections over to the driveway where I would attach them to the 30 in. squares of plywood with C clamps.  I stooped down and raised the centre section waist high.  The four ends remained imperturbably on the ground.  A hint of disaster began to penetrate.  I raised the centre to the top of my head.  Oh, no!  I raised it as high as I could reach.  The ends just cleared the ground.  I stood there looking like I was holding the framework of a giant parasol.  As soon as I began to walk my creation began an undulating motion.  I tried to damp its oscillation by changing the cadence of my step.  This required a rapid change of rhythm since the damn thing was really responsive.  I was in the midst of this inadvertent boo-ga-loo when I noticed my neighbours staring thoughtfully in my direction.  They have tended to view my behaviour as a little strange for some time, and this latest exhibition did nothing to shake their confidence in the opinion that I was a prime candidate for the local laughing academy just north of here.

I'll admit it.  I was undone.  I laid the whole thing down on the driveway and sat in the sun, gently flexing my fingers along the back of my neck.  Sometimes I get these damn headaches ...
At times like these, ham radio can be such a help.  I went inside and fired up the rig on fifteen.  A WO in Milwaukee came back to my CQ.  After the amenities, I described my plight in lucid terms.  He immediately had the perfect solution!  "Yes, sir," he said, "just cap the ends, fill it up with water and freeze the whole thing.  It'll be just as rigid as you want.  Ha, ha, ha," he cackled insanely, vastly amused at his cleverness.  I complained of sudden QSB and signed off.
After a few days I went out and disassembled the whole thing.  The plastic pipe is lying on the ground in the far end of the back yard.  It can be had for a very reasonable price.  It has been there for three years.

Subscribing to some idiotic ethic that postulates that adversity is meant to strengthen character, I resumed brooding about how to put up an inexpensive quad.  In no time at all it became evident to me that I should have chosen material with more strength, say like one-inch wooden doweling.  In order to insure success I decided to fibreglass the doweling.  Better to spend a little extra and be sure.  I asked some of the boating types at work about fibre glassing and was assured it was a relatively simple operation.  Naturally, I was crouched by the door of Builders' Emporium on Saturday morning, money in hand, awaiting opening hour.

The only problem with the doweling was length.  The longest pieces they had were eleven feet, two feet too short.  This was only a temporary setback.  My fevered brain devised an on-the-spot fix.  I picked out eight pieces of 3/4 in. doweling.  I would simply drill out the ends of the I in. doweling about eight inches and insert the 3/4 in. dowel and glue them together.

Congratulating myself on my obvious problem-solving ability, I proceeded to the section containing materials for fibre glassing.  Horror!  The prices!  The boating types had forgotten to tell me I could have gold plated the poles for less money.  A further complication - Builders' didn't have the glass cloth in rolls.  I wanted the materials right then, not later.  I bought two large squares of glass cloth and the cans of resin and setting agent.  I forgot to buy solvent for cleaning up the resin.  This time the bill was more imposing, $15.40 for the lumber and $18.85 for the fibreglass junk.  Heck, with tax, it was only a little over $35, and that's still a long way from the $59.95 most quad kits are advertised for.

I rushed home with my newest purchases, imbued with new enthusiasm, a blend of overconfidence and plain ignorance.  I glanced at the directions for fibre glassing.  Admittedly, it was raining out and the temperature was in the low 60's, but who wants to split hairs over little things like that?  I laid out the big squares of glass cloth and began cutting strips for rolling onto the doweling.  No one had told me that glass cloth has such a tendency to unravel.  In short order the family room looked as if Florence Nightingale had held a bandage wrapping rally for the Crimean War.  I decided it would be better if I conducted the actual wrapping operation out on the porch even though the weather was miserable.  I had less trouble drilling the ends of the 1in. doweling to accept the 3/4 in. doweling than I had expected. (I was beginning to develop a paranoid expectation of trouble at every step.) Realizing that I had weakened the walls of the doweling with the drilling,  I wrapped the outside with copper wire (No. 32 PE of course) and wrapped electrical tape over the wire.  The result would have pleased a Watusi tribesman.  It looked like a thirteen and a half foot spear.

I laid one of the spears between two chairs and began the fibre glassing operation.  The trouble was that the three foot strips of glass cloth tended to come loose before I could overlay the next strip and get it started.  I had liberally doused the spear with resin before starting.  The whole operation wasn't going well.  The resin got all over my hands and arms.  Bits of the glass cloth started to adhere to the resin.  I began to panic.  More cloth.  More resin.  The spear was beginning to look lumpy in places.  I abandoned all pretence at competence.  Resin was puddling on the concrete floor beneath the spear.  The resin on my hands, arms and clothing was beginning to congeal.  More cloth came off on me.  I felt like an old W. C. Fields movie, trying to peel cloth off of one hand only to have it stick on the other hand.  I also felt like an ass.

My teenagers chose this moment to arrive home with- some friends.  "Hey you guys, look, it's the MUMMY." They all peered at me. "l think it's FRANKENSTEIN," said the youngest.  "You're both wrong," the eldest said flatly, "can't you see the neighbours have tarred and feathered the Old Man while we were gone?  I told you they would get him sooner or later." They beat a hasty retreat.  There's a certain look I get at these times. I made one right decision.  The seven poles would remain unfibre glassed.  It was raining anyway, so I couldn't go much further.  Back down to Builders' Emporium and the purchase of some epoxy paint.  Expensive as hell, but the paint man said it would withstand anything.  Only another $5.15, which beats trying to fibre glass the poles anyway.

While the epoxy paint was drying, I zipped back down to Builders' Emporium (I'm well known there) and picked up two three inch end bells, a three inch threaded T, and a twelve inch threaded pipe.  Then over to the lumber section where I got more doweling to fit into the pipe sections.  I forced a five foot section of doweling through the T joint and jammed an end bell on either end.  Another section of doweling was stuck into the bottom of the T joint to make a mast.  The end bells would be bolted to some aluminium plates and the spreaders attached to the plates with C clamps. The pipe fittings were expensive and the doweling wasn't cheap either. The bill came to $13.71, but the end was in sight. I was forced to wait for the next weekend to assemble my masterpiece, since it was January and too dark to work by the time I got home.

Saturday I strung the wires for the three bands on each of the sections.  I had been advised by competent engineering talent at the space factory where I laboured that some of the hams had successfully fed all three elements with a single 52 ohm coax by bringing the three driven elements together at a single feedpoint.  This seemed so simple I wondered how it could work.  It was simple.  It didn't work.  I tried resonating with my grid dipper, but I kept getting sharp dips all over the place and finally abandoned this brief attempt at the scientific approach.  I copped out and used three different coax cables, one for each band.

I had started another project, an "inexpensive" home-built tower (more about that some other time) and decided I would use the first twenty foot section to test my quad. I rounded up my teenagers, all four, and we hoisted the assembled quad up on the tower.  I stood back to admire my handiwork.  Alas!  The weight of the No. 12 wire was too much for the 3/4 in. doweling.  The whole quad appeared to suffer from advanced arthritis.  Although the ten and fifteen meter sections attached to the 1 in. doweling were reasonably taut, the twenty meter section caused the 3/4 in. doweling to bend over at an awkward angle.  The twenty meter section just wasn't going to hack it.  I got up on a ladder with a saw and methodically cut the spreaders just above the fifteen meter attachment.  The boom wasn't too tight in the end bells and so I was able to spin the spreaders around until all eight were cut down.

Standing amid the wreckage of tangled wire and stumps of wood, I could feel that funny headache in the back o f my neck coming on.  There was nothing more I could do that evening.  I went inside and fixed some drinks.  I drank all of the drinks.

The next morning I decided I might as well try out the remaining two bands.  I hooked them up and turned on the rig.  I could hardly believe my ears.  I switched over to the Mosley vertical.  The signal was S-5.  I switched back to the quad.  The meter read S-9 plus 10 dB.  Fantastic!  I swung the quad around.  The signal started dropping.  It was down to 40 dB off the side.  Out of sight!  I was so excited I forgot about breakfast and lunch.  I was working one station after another, first on ten and then on fifteen.  By early evening I was gracefully acknowledging S-9 reports from Japan.  One JA gave me an S-8, and I immediately decided he must have inferior receiving equipment.

This was only the beginning of a long line of quad antennas in the three years that have passed since that lovely Sunday morning in January.  I found that the big end plates had a windmill effect, and I had steel straps welded to the end bells, which proved strong enough to support the spreaders with much less wind resistance.  Also I found that I really needed some matching device between the coax and the driven element.  A gamma match worked out quite well.

I began a long series of experiments with element spacing for the individual bands.  My peerless engineering had limited me to ten and fifteen, but I was able to satisfy myself that the quad is one hell of an antenna when it is tuned up properly.  Generally speaking, if you have a low SWR and are getting at least 20 dB front-to-back, you are in good shape.  It is possible to get a higher front-to back at some sacrifice in bandwidth.  My present quad is a three-element job with no tuning stubs.  I cut the reflector 5% longer and the director 5% shorter than the driven element and strung them up as closed loops without any tuning stubs.  So far, after a week's testing, it seems to be working out pretty well, 25 dB over S-9 in Tokyo and 40 over in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

I suffered through a few further reverses.  The wind blew the tower town and broke one spreader, which I quickly replaced.  One day at work I got a phone call from the youngest harmonic who plaintively relayed the information that my daughter's horse had got loose, tripped over the guy wires and the tower was down again, this time with two broken spreaders.  Small matter!  Now I knew I had a working antenna, and I accepted these trivial happenings with equanimity, not even the hint of those headaches.

Honesty requires me to admit that by the end of the year I purchased the $59.95 kit from Polyquad.  This finally got me on twenty.  Incidentally, I ran a series of tests while the quad was mounted on a twelve foot four-by-four.  The twenty meter section barely cleared the ground.  In both Europe and Africa I was only 5 dB under K6SHA who is about two miles away.  Since Casey was running 2 KW PEP to a four element Yagi 60 feet up and I was barefoot with the HT-37, he should have been at least 10 dB louder on power factor alone.  Remember, my quad is barely off the ground.

I gave the original quad antenna to W6UOD and his son, Steve WB6UHE.  It was really a minor investment anyway.  Only cost me $68 or so, which any way you figure it is only a few dollars more than those store bought kits.  I don't care to discuss those headaches or the liquor bill.  As the new generation would say, "It isn't relevant."
That 54 ft all-wood white tower though	... but, as I said earlier, that's another	story.

W6SUN