You may be right on point Henry, you have a lot more experience with beam construction and design than I do. I was being very simplistic, trying to not go into a lecture. I just found wider spacing at Dr/D1 to be easier to work and tune. I also saw bandwidth increasing. Even though I didn't know why, I did notice my antenna using a gamma did like the driven element to be a tad longer than self resonance suggested also. I could never make the point clear for my buddies however.
I also liked using the Moonraker boom which is pretty much balanced by its larger diameter center section and smaller but equal length end pieces. I think my center section was about 54" so that was my Dr/Di spacing using the muffler clamp styled Wilson hardware. While I used 54" spacing I noticed that Maco M104/M105 use 45" and 43" respectively, and I understood that Maco used an optimized design for their Old Hygain models. I tried the new ideas, but never found them as effective as the older more well balanced ideas. I can't tell gain even on my best day Henry, but I can see and measure bandwidth, and I don't believe you can prove that a narrow bandwidth beam works better (except maybe on paper) in your beams than one with a nice large bowl shaped curve. I worked mine since the 80's and have never found better performance in a beam at my location.
It was a fluke in construction when I took an old Wilson Y-Quad, use the dual polarity elements to build a 4 element beam with 3/4" to 5/8" to 1/2" tubing in the reflector and D2 at whatever length in tapper they happened to be, and Dr and D1 being 5/8" to 1/2" using whatever tapper they happened to be. Note: I had two reflectors and two driven elements in that old Y-quad and just a dream with my first ever beam antenna.
A real mis-mash in design and construction, but that thing is still in shape to be functional I think. I have other beams including a 3 & 4 element Maco's to a 5 element Long John made by HyGain, but none have ever worked as good as the one made from scraps. If I was going to design a beam antenna I surely wouldn't use the ideas I note here, but I can tell you that thing worked as well or better than any.
Maybe our own member, DxMan, can recall how my beam use to talk to the group during the CDX contest, all day long mounted just 27' feet high on my 17' foot high roof deck. I never won a contest, but I was proud to participate and considered I was successful none the less.
