...I always thought the J.G. "audio gain" came from how much higher pitched and louder someone's voice got who just got fleeced for that amount of money for a seriously over-built antenna.
Kinda like getting kicked front-n-center, or a visit from Ben Dover and his wife Eileen...
You might want to look into a Signal Engineering 4 el Quad, then one by one, replace each wire with insulated stranded 12gauge and retune until you have the best performance.
This will allow you to remove the elements for transportation and not worry about breakage from fatigue like you might get if you used the OEM solid copper wire.
Perhaps S.E. might custom make one with stranded 12gauge wire if you were to request it and pay the difference.
Tuning is critical.
A Quad's performance just gets better and better the more carefully the elements are tuned together for a specific frequency.
The formulas for wire length will only get you hand-grenade close compared to the performance you'll get if you individually tune each element using a beacon signal for receiving, turning it back and forth toward, then away from it, over and over, setting the wire length according to performance.
It may take all day / weekend to do it right but you'll end up with one butt-kickin' beam when finished!
I believe you'll find insulated stranded wire will need to be considerably shorter than the solid copper wire due to a lower velocity factor encountered with insulated stranded wire.
In the late '80s I built a 3 element Quad and tuned it that way, and at 40' it easily beat several local 5 element Yagi beams at 60', into Australia & Hawaii, and I only had 1/2 the power they were running.
S.E. Quads use 3/8" fiberglass rods poked into short aluminum tubing protruding thru the boom.
If you label each rod and tube and use a hose-type clamp to hold each fiberglass rod the right distance out to keep the wire elements tight, you can simply flex them enough (with the wire still attached) to slide them out and fold up the beam for loading into the mobile and quick 'snap-together' assembly on the spot.
Careful not to tangle the wires! - Practice makes perfect.
I'm not sure how S.E. does the matching network these days, it might be fine just leaving it in place or you might also have to devise a way to quickly remove and reinstall the matching network, but that shouldn't be too tough, just requires a little thought and ingenuity.
A Quad will typically have higher gain and a considerably lower Take Off Angle (TOA) than a Yagi, especially at lower height above ground, so if you tune it carefully even a 3 element should make a much more competitive antenna for your mobile Super-Bowl application than a Yagi.
Food for thought -
Have fun, 73, and I'll be listening for ya.
Kinda like getting kicked front-n-center, or a visit from Ben Dover and his wife Eileen...
You might want to look into a Signal Engineering 4 el Quad, then one by one, replace each wire with insulated stranded 12gauge and retune until you have the best performance.
This will allow you to remove the elements for transportation and not worry about breakage from fatigue like you might get if you used the OEM solid copper wire.
Perhaps S.E. might custom make one with stranded 12gauge wire if you were to request it and pay the difference.
Tuning is critical.
A Quad's performance just gets better and better the more carefully the elements are tuned together for a specific frequency.
The formulas for wire length will only get you hand-grenade close compared to the performance you'll get if you individually tune each element using a beacon signal for receiving, turning it back and forth toward, then away from it, over and over, setting the wire length according to performance.
It may take all day / weekend to do it right but you'll end up with one butt-kickin' beam when finished!
I believe you'll find insulated stranded wire will need to be considerably shorter than the solid copper wire due to a lower velocity factor encountered with insulated stranded wire.
In the late '80s I built a 3 element Quad and tuned it that way, and at 40' it easily beat several local 5 element Yagi beams at 60', into Australia & Hawaii, and I only had 1/2 the power they were running.
S.E. Quads use 3/8" fiberglass rods poked into short aluminum tubing protruding thru the boom.
If you label each rod and tube and use a hose-type clamp to hold each fiberglass rod the right distance out to keep the wire elements tight, you can simply flex them enough (with the wire still attached) to slide them out and fold up the beam for loading into the mobile and quick 'snap-together' assembly on the spot.
Careful not to tangle the wires! - Practice makes perfect.
I'm not sure how S.E. does the matching network these days, it might be fine just leaving it in place or you might also have to devise a way to quickly remove and reinstall the matching network, but that shouldn't be too tough, just requires a little thought and ingenuity.
A Quad will typically have higher gain and a considerably lower Take Off Angle (TOA) than a Yagi, especially at lower height above ground, so if you tune it carefully even a 3 element should make a much more competitive antenna for your mobile Super-Bowl application than a Yagi.
Food for thought -
Have fun, 73, and I'll be listening for ya.