K4ZMV
Jim Brassell
Fortson, Georgia USA

My DXE-TFS4-40P Four Square is complete, less 85 radials which I will get in over the next few weeks. I will have to say it works as advertised, if not better. It has 2-4 dB gain over my GAP Voyager on 40 Meters and the Voyager has been very, very good. With the Voyager, when I find where DX is listening in a pileup, I get answered in the first or second call. The Four Square is better. Cuts out a lot of the loud US stations off the back and the gain really helps. For example, when I listen SE, I can sometimes hear W7 stations at S1-2. Then when I switch to NW, they come up to S8-9+. That really proves the front to back. My orientation is slightly more than 10 degrees off true north. This was done to give a little better orientation of the NE lobe into Africa. The control console is easy to use. The OMNI feature is helpful when listening in a pileup to find the station working the DX. Directivity can hurt you in that situation. I am still learning how to use the antenna in terms of finding DX related to propagation and the gray line. Preparation of the site for the Four Square was a major event for me as it took removing several trees and grinding the stumps. Once the site was clean, I laid out the placement of the antennas and the control box. I used a Ditch Witch to cut the trenches for the phasing lines and the coax/control line. The trenching effort turned out to be Herculean as I live in Georgia and that means CLAY. It has been wet now for several months and the Witch, aptly named, had a mind of its own. Anyway, the trenchs are cut and all is well. The phasing lines and coax/control lines are run in PVC conduit. I used a surplus ammunition box to house the dummy load and mounted it on the same pipe as the control box. The ammo box is water tight and I can remove the dummy load for a project, if I need to. I strongly recommend the use of the radial and tilt plates. Getting the antenna up and down for tuning purposes is a major strong point for the tilt plate. I have 32 radials installed on the tuned antenna. The other three antennas have 3 radials installed. I see an SWR of <1.2:1 in the shack using an Array Solutions Power Master. The attached picture shows the completed four square. The site is surrounded by trees. There is a chain link fence to its north about 50 feet away. There is a tower with two yagis and a 160 Meter inverted L to the east about 200 feet away. I can tell no effect on the performance of the antenna. All in all, the four square works very well. One could spend $15,000 on a 70 foot tower and a three element 40 Meter yagi and maybe get slightly better performance. But, I don't have to wait for a yagi to turn to where I want to listen. That instant directivity and the OMNI ability can mean the difference between working a DX station in the pileup and just listening to him.