Maco103c Goodbye!

[PA629]

I've been lucky with my quads handling the wind and ice here on the shores of Lake Erie.The fiberglass spreaders I'm using aren't tapered like the old Comet/Shooting Star design, but are solid straight fiberglass. Actually they are golf course flagsticks from a local course that was replacing theirs. I once had a temporarily mounted two element quad get away from me during the tuning phase and it hit my garage roof with one of the spreaders end on. About a foot of it went through the roof, but the spreader itself was undamaged. Another local antenna builder uses paracord on his quads as supports. He strings the paracord around the spreader about halfway between the boom hubs and the wire loops, about where the glass spreaders and the aluminum tubing are joined. He then coats the p-cord with either fiberglass resin or epoxy for added strength. Seems to work well for him, I'm not aware of any of his quads coming down from storm damage. YMMV.

 

[jessejamesdallas]

Mine last year went threw several bad storms, and a couple of ice storms, and i think I only had one wire break, and I'm not sure it actually broke, it looked more like it just got pulled out of the eyelet. But I guess the wire must be getting brittle or something because this year it seems I no sooner get one wire fixed, another one snaps...

I have to admit tho, the storm that took out my L4 was one for the record books.... I've lived in North Texas all my life, and never seen Hurricane strength winds that lasted for 2 to 3 hours with no let-up... and no rain!