RadCom, ha ha ha!

Well, I've heard it all now!

This month's RadCom is hot off the doorstep, wherein we have a lovely article about constructing a 'mini-quad' for, erm, 40m.

Now, 'mini quad' is clearly a relative term, because this thing still has sides of over 7.6m each!  That requires a pretty decent tower to get the bottom of the quad at a reasonable electrical height over ground.  Hardly something you could stick on a push-up aluminium pole in more than zero wind conditions.

IK1MNJ shows what a full sized 40m 2-ele quad looks like.  The 'mini' version is not vastly smaller.

So, I really had to laugh when I read the author's view that this reduced, 'mini' size was "very useful for typical suburban situations"!

Ha ha!  What?

The bloody thing is so big that the photographer struggled to fit it in the frame, even with a wide-angle lens!

If you think it's not actually that bad in the IK1MNJ photo, cast your eye away from comparison with the house to comparison with the bloke standing on the bottom right, in front of the fruit netting. 

Hands up if you have a plot big enough - and neighbours tolerant enough - to put up a quad of over 7.6m per side.  Come to think of it, hands up if you think that your resulting 'mini 'quad' would survive the next 70mph gales.

Sure, there must be a few folks who could stick something like this up.  But certainly not enough to make it of any real interest to the wider readership of RadCom.

Is it really very surprising that newcomers look at this kind of thing and decide amateur radio's not for them?