Welcome to the home page for a web site dedicated primarily to the 4-Square. Here you will find information about 4-Squares in the UK and around the world.
Not everyone knows what a 4-Square is. Four separate verticals are arranged in a square (hence "4-Square") with a vertical in each corner. The height of the verticals and the sides of the square are usually a quarter wave length at the desired operating frequency. Feeding the verticals with the correct power and phase division between them makes the array directional across the diagonals of the square. The power and phase distribution is usually switchable to make the array "rotatable", usually in four directions 90 degrees apart. However, it is possible to have an eight direction array although the gain in the broadside directions is slightly lower than across the diagonals.
There are some very good, and popular, 4-Square array phasing systems commercially available - see the links page. Also there are many people using homebrew phasing systems, some of which are featured in the pages on this site.
Differing gain and front-to-back ratios can be achieved with differing phase/current ratios in the phasing system and also with the spacing of the array elements. There is an abundance of information available on the internet and, of course, ON4UN's book "Low Band DXing" is considered by many to be an essential resource.
A multitude of different construction techniques for verticals are in use from commercially available monoband antennas to simple wire elements....... again, many different construction techniques are featured here.
If you have a 4-Square and would like to have it featured on this web site then please e-mail me at the address below with photographs and as much information as possible regarding the construction, phasing system used etc etc.
With the exchange of ideas and experiences perhaps we can help each other. Who knows, maybe some people will be inspired to build their own.
There are now five sections, one for the UK, one for EU one for NA, one for Africa and now one for Oceania...... all running 4-Squares of course.
Please e-mail me with your 4-Square info, pics, experiences etc for inclusion on the site g4ata@4-square.co.uk
There is a page listing 4-squares known to me - I will try and keep this as up-to-date as possible. If you would like to let me know about more please e-mail me at the address above.
If you have another phased array and would like it including on this site then please send me the info. I would be happy to include a section for 2 ele, 3 ele or more phased arrays.
Fame at last!! This site was featured in the ARRL Contest Newsletter in early March 2010 as Web Site of the Week ........ thanks guys!
Apologies for the recent lack of updates to the site. Pressures of work this year have prevented me from devoting as much time to the site as I would have liked. Hopefully now I will be able to catch up with some update.
Latest addition ..... a 20m 4-square from Arizona, N7ZV.
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