It’s crunch time for the 40 metre 4-Square! Today I’m on a mission to tame the “Beast” – tightening connectors, colour-coding the feed lines, and fitting what feels like a mountain of ferrites (about 40 of them… nearly £300 worth!) to choke every last piece of unwanted current.
There’s plenty of laughter, plenty of solder, and a fair bit of head-scratching as I prepare for the final “X = 0” tune-up. We’ll talk coax, choking strategy, dump-load measurements, and how to keep a 4-Square behaving before that all-important tuning day.
Grab a brew – this is the big push before perfection.
📡 Ferrite mix: Type 31
SPENT TODAY:
💷 £297 on ferrites
💷 £110 on the 33m of Aircell 7
🧰 Next episode: “X = 0 – Final Tune!”
0:00 Intro & today’s mission
0:20 Ferrites everywhere
1:00 Cabinet & connectors
2:00 Colour-coding feed lines
3:15 Clip-on vs wound chokes
4:45 Cabinet tidy-up
6:10 Ferrites on each radiator
8:40 Type 31 mix
10:10 Heat-shrink & Ox-Guard
13:50 Connection fixes
14:50 Dump-power check
15:30 Choking the tower
17:00 Coax recovery
18:30 Storm & dead-man anchor
20:00 Old coax reels
21:10 New patch lead
23:00 Cable-wrangling tricks
25:20 Cable-tie chaos
27:30 Power-meter setup
28:15 First readings
28:50 X=0 tease & wrap-up
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