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•
A
Novel Approach
to
Feeding
and Tuning the
Three-Band
Boomless
Quad
W. E. Rabenhorst, WA4 VWY
1715 29th Aven ue
Vero Beach, Flor ida 32960
Member of the Bar,
U.S. Supreme Court
Alt houg h I learn ed two (odes at age 13,
one of I J c hildren on a farm in Wisconsin.
a nd received my discharge from t he Signal
Corps in Washington. D. C., in November
19 I';. I (jill not obtain my General license
unt il Murch 19 48 and m y Class A in March
1950.
One (by I worked W3J XH in n earb y
Maryland :JIlLI was invited to drive the few
mi les to sec a quad antenna, my first. It
t urned out to be a 10-1 5 t wo-element
all-metal job a nd o nly a few feet above
grou nd. surrou nded by buildings and overhanging
trees, and enclosed inside a high
stee l fence . The ow ner claimed fine dx
co ntacts.
I the n went about b u ilding a I S-meter
all- metal qUJU with both elements grounded
o n t he upper boom. Although this quad had
c xc vllc nt FIB ratio, t he hand remained dead
for several d ays, so the 15·mctcr job was
taken d o wn and a 20· meter quad o f sim ilar
type built to take its place. It was initially
fed at only fou r fee t three inches from t he
ground. T he first contact was wi t h K3 UI G , a
"Governmen t E m ployee" n in e miles acro ss
town. The QSL which a rrived two days later
bore the name Barry Gold water, with a
beau tifu l color photo of t he Nation's Capitol
b uilding. O ther contacts were m ostly
beyond t he Mississippi R iver and Central
America and, when the band was eit her just
o pen ing o r clo sing, generally q uad-an ten na
stat ions answered . Dia mond-shape q uads are
said to have a lo wer angle of radiation.
Be fore leaving Washingto n, D. c., I gave this
quad to W3Y AE.
After arriving in F lorida I d ecided to
experiment with q uads of t he more convcntlonal
square , all wire type. Twelve different
quads were b u ilt and torn down - b o o m,
short boom and b oomless. No. 13 , the
Nylon co rd keeps spacing for 5 2 ohms im p edan c e when up N2.
52
73 M AGA ZINE