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Lords homebrew Cubical Quad+1 antenna. 5 element

My Home Brew Cubical Quad+1 antenna 5 element made back in feb 11 1999 :)

lords5Element.jpg

The spacing of each element is tuned for freq length.
and all 3 directors are the same size.
the driven of course is the Second one from the back from the center point of the mast..
I know its only 1 picture and hard to see the cubed copper around the elements..
The outer part of the elements were made red/orange 8 foot from garden stakes.
I guess they were some kinda of heavy duty fiber plastic,they worked at the time.

The boom was 1 1/2 inch round and was 34.5 foot long and a bear to work with.
each element was spaced almost 7 foot apart from each other give or take a few inches for fine tuning..
the reflector element whole length was 34 foot, and for the rest of the elements,Driven,director 1,2,3 take about 1 foot off going down to director 1 ,which is the front of the quad beam..
now in order to keep the SWR low this antenna didn't have a matcher it was the length of the outer cubed copper wire.
put it this way just the wire on 1 side of the cube was 113.5 ,inches(9foot 5inches) so taking standard coax,black RG58 50ohm unbalanced and ataching it to the balanced corner of the
driven wasn't bad seeing though I did the math and made the quad centered for 27.2050(good old channel 20) my SWR was at 1.2 which wasnt bad..

The worst part about this whole thing..and i mean in a bad way
I did this all myself, besides having a buddy stretch out the 200 foot of copper wire with me with his truck and a eye ring mounted to the side of a barn...

the second worst part was keeping the copper straight well making the 9.5 foot bends for the cube!

I never did see how heavy this thing was but it was a bitch putting it up for a 1 person job..it was up for about 3 years before it got sold.
That 100watt box I was talking out of had no problem talking anywhere I swung that quad to as you know the gain on any beam is sweet!
The rejection..well the hole backside of the antenna was one..
a good friend 5 miles from me had no problem watching me go from 30+ to about 1 on his meter when i swung that sucker away from him...
it was under 100 bucks to build ..less rotor that was 300 bucks with a bearing.. I had that rotor untill 1 week ago with a bearing
some MotherF$%#er stole it off my porch..1999-2007 RIP rotor:(
Thanks for looking :)

Until next time when lords puts up his Spitfire 427 3 element beam
with a 25 foot Reflector for starters..

Peace!
 

quad

Nice looking quad,but I have to question your reflector total length which you said was 34ft.I figured this twice and ran a java script program and it keeps coming up your reflector should be 37.860 at 27.205. The driven element comes out to 36.941. Am I reading your post wrong or did you have the reflector total length smaller than your driven element total length? Also you said the total boom length was around 34 feet, I don't see any type of truss system.Was wondering what was the wall thickness of that inch and a half boom?
 
the reflector element whole length was 34 foot, and for the rest of the elements,Driven,director 1,2,3 take about 1 foot off going down to director 1

back then there was no java for this measurement..
34'33'32'31'30

it wasn't set for channel 20...and it was a water pipe.
remember the elements don't weigh much .there not full Aluminum.

thanks for looking :)
 
If the Driven loop was 33 foot (396") it was cut for somewere around 30.500 Mhz.

You said
put it this way just the wire on 1 side of the cube was 113.5 ,inches(9foot 5inches) so taking standard coax,black RG58 50ohm unbalanced and ataching it to the balanced corner of the
driven wasn't bad seeing though I did the math and made the quad centered for 27.2050(good old channel 20)

113.5" per side (454") is much closer ( 26.560Mhz if this is the driven loop) to Ch 20 than the 34/33/32/31 foot number you posted above, sure you did not make a mistake somewere?


73
Jeff
 
driven wasn't bad seeing though I did the math and made the quad centered for 27.2050(good old channel 20) my SWR was at 1.2 which wasnt bad.. If your antenna was cut as you say it was,34,33,32,31,30 then that antenna was cut to 30.294 mhz, not exact but close.I would like to see the total wire length that you have jotted down on the back of the picture.And I figured your antenna with a pencil and paper the first two times,I used the java script the third time just to check myself.
 

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