Antenna #1, Antenna #1, Antenna #2, Antenna #2, #1, #2, #1, #2... VK6ACY from W1WEF." That was September ‘95, when the new 4-square on 80 meters was being compared to a dipole. Looking back in the log, on September 14 the 4-square was 3 S-units louder than the 80-ft-high dipole. Front to back was 20 to 24 dB. It was really neat to be able to steer an antenna on 75 meters!

Although many of the big gun contest stations with 4-squares have quite elaborate systems using towers on insulated bases or tapered aluminum full quarter wave verticals, we have taken a simpler approach, suspending verticals from ropes strung from the top of a single tower. Part of the impetus to try this came from Willy Umanets, UA9BA, although Willy probably doesn’t know he did it!

On December 20, 1994, Willy wrote the UN2L 80-meter story on the Internet Contest Reflector. Excerpting from what he said... "W1KM was the first US signal worked, S5 to S6. I heard W3LPL and N2RM, but they couldn’t hear me. Later, after 2200Z the band started peaking, and I worked K4VX and N2RM easily. Right then, KC1SJ [now W1UK] called, boy what a signal! Who is this guy? K1AR called shortly after, at least two S-units weaker than KC1SJ. K1TR followed AR, about the same strength as AR. K1IU about one S-unit weaker than this KC1SJ. KY1H a little weaker than K1IU, then K1K? called. Was it K1KP or K1KI? No QSO."

This time improvements were made to avoid more opportunities for a rebuild! It was decided that ropes over treetops, especially when the other end is on a fixed object like a tower, are not good. Three of the four ropes broke from abrasion over branches. Build II included raising the tower another ten feet (also rebuilding and reinforcing the 2-element 40 per N4KG in NCJ), and this time running ropes from the top of the tower to tree trunks close to the ground.

With the 108-ft tower, it is not possible to drop full-length verticals from ropes (unless perhaps the ropes went out much further than I could go in my heavily wooded lot), so I decided to follow the lead from GM3POI and use top loading on shorter verticals. Clive uses 45-ft vertical 12-gauge wires, dropped from ropes off his 70-ft tower, with inverted top hats of two 16-ft lengths of wire. One follows down the direction of the rope, the other is tied off on his tower with a rope going to the twenty foot mark.

An inverted V at 90 feet used to be a competitive 80-meter antenna in the northeast. But as sunspots declined the low bands became much more important to the final contest totals, so several attempts were made to build a better mousetrap. My 5-element inverted V array never worked right, and an 80-meter rotatable dipole had mechanical problems. My 160-meter ground plane with eight raised radials seemed to work so well that an 80-meter design with four of them (4-square) was the next project. It just happened that my 130-ft tower with four 20-meter beams was in the right place at the right time, and it still had ropes from the failed 5-L inverted V array.

Once the 80-meter 4-square was in place, and some elusive problems with poorly soldered coax connectors tracked down, it seemed worthwhile to think about the same thing on 160 meters. The existing 160-meter ground plane antenna consisted of a 135-ft wire attached at the 118-ft level of the tower that has two Cushcraft 2-element 40-meter beams. It slopes out from the tower to a point about 60 feet from the tower base, and about 10 feet lower than the base (down the hill). It’s fed about 8 feet off the ground and has eight raised radials.

This was a "killer" antenna already, so why tinker with success? A 4-square offered the possibility of 3-5 dB for- ward gain, plus 20-25 dB front-to-back rejection. A 120-ft tower obviously doesn’t allow for using ropes to suspend full-size quarter-wavelength verticals, so the "sloping T" method described by W1WEF was used. The three new verticals were made with a 90-ft vertical component, and a 45-ft sloping T, with each end attached to a rope. These three new antennas aren’t exactly vertical. Though the bases are in a 1/4 wavelength square (almost), the vertical wires slope inward toward the tower, so the T junction is only about 45 feet from the tower. That way the ropes holding up the verticals don’t have to be attached too far away (and yes, the 80-ft trees nearby help also).

1. It is suggested that one vertical be put up and pruned for the desired frequency first, and then the other three made identical. However, the "desired frequency" is not what you think it is! Say you want the system optimized for 3510 kHz. Due to mutual coupling, the resonant frequency of the verticals in the array shifts upward. Comtek recommends tuning the individual verticals 5% lower than the desired frequency. Following their recommendation, that means 3335 kHz!

2. Make the other three verticals as identical as possible to the first. This is not as easily done as said, especially when on uneven terrain.

3. Use foam RG-11 coax or the lines will not reach the phasing box. Cut to 246 x Velocity Factor divided by Frequency. In this case the frequency is the truly desired frequency of 3510 kHz. The W1WEF CATV RG-11 had a velocity factor of 0.83 as measured with an Autek RF1 antenna analyzer. (See the Mar/Apr ‘96 NCJ article, "Installing PL259s on CATV Coax.")

4. Space the verticals a quarter wavelength apart (246/f). If the system is balanced, with all four verticals close to identical, the dumped power (power not transferred to the antennas) will be under 5%.

5. Radials may cross each other in a pattern as shown in Figure 2. The radials are not connected together where they cross. Length is 234/f, minus about 2% when insulated wire is used. Fourteen gauge insulated stranded wire is fine for radials.

6. The termination scheme used at W1WEF at the bottom of each vertical is shown in Figure 4.

For W1WEF, after seeing the awesome 80-meter antennas at W0UN, N4AR, K3ZO, W3LPL, and K1EA to name a few, this simpler approach gives a competitive edge never dreamed of. It is possible to put a four square up without great expense. It just takes a lot of wire, a lot of work, and a lot of room.

In the 1996 ARRL DX Contest, the 160-meter QSO/country total for the K1KI multi-multi effort was 278/64 compared to W3LPL’s 164/54. W3LPL is already testing his new full-sized 160-meter 4-square array! On 80 meters the K1KI totals were just a little better than those generated by W3LPL’s 2-element 80-meter quads (829/90 vs 809/89)!

"A Switchable Four Element 80-Meter Phased Array" by Fred Collins, W1HKK/W1CF, March 1965 QST, p 48. (N6BV: though the feed system was less than totally satisfactory, the system provided gain and some pattern).

"360 Degree Steerable Vertical Phased Arrays" by Fred Collins, W1CF (and others), April 1977 QST. (N6BV: this used the now-discredited Wilkinson divider system, see pp 8-12 to 8-13 of The ARRL Antenna Book, 17th edition).

"Phase Adjustment Techniques for a 4-Element Square Phased Vertical Array" by Lahlum, March 1991 QST, p 39.

"The Square-Four Receiving Array" by Gary Nichols, KD9SV, John Goller, K9UWA, and Roy Lewallen, W7EL, ARRL Antenna Compendium, Volume 3 (1992), published by ARRL.

The ARRL Antenna Book, edited by Dean Straw, N6BV, 17th edition, pp 8-25 to 8-30, published by ARRL. Theory and construction details.

Low-Band DXing, by John Devoldere, ON4UN, pp 11-35 to 11-48 and 11-55 to 11-63, plus optional software with a tutorial and engineering detail, second edition, published by ARRL. Good detail for building your own matching and switching system.