Lightning Bolt Quad Antennas were available from LBA QUADS however when I contacted them in Dec 2006 to purchase a 6M antenna, I was informed that they were out of business. This was really sad news as they seemed to make a decent product but the cost of supplies was too much to bear for the volume of business.

I have left this review on the website just in case someone were thinking of obtaining a used on and wanted to know about the quality of the antennas.

4623 PERRY HWY, VOLANT,PA. 16156
(724) 530-7396 PHONE
(724) 530-6796 FAX

http://www.lightningboltantennas.com (now inactive)

Please note that I am not compensated in anyway for listing this information here. This is strictly a service to the the amateur community for information dissemination.

WHICH ONE?????????

After much research, analysis and down right head scratching on which antenna would give the most bang for the buck and not require me to have to mortgage the house to buy it and all the supporting hardware, I decided on the Lightning Bolt Delta Loop Quad. My criteria for selecting the antenna was:

ON THE AIR ......

Whenever I was talking to anyone on the air or copying the mail, I would find out what antenna they were using and compare signals and reports. One day I heard a group of hams on 20M talking about the Lightning Bolt quad antenna one of them had just bought and installed. The owner was very much impressed with the performance and the price. This caught my attention. I had never heard of the Lightning Bolt quad but had heard a few quads on the air and they always seemed to have a very good signal. I checked into the Lightning Bolt antennas and was impressed with the claims and the prices shown on the website.

ASK THE FELLOW (OR LADY) WHO OWNS ONE.......

I have always heard the if you want an honest opinion of something, ask the fellow (or lady) who owns one. They will usually either swear by it (or at it) as the case may be. So off to the internet again to look for reviews on the Lightning Bolt antennas. Well as things would be, I found several review comments. There were the standard "well I wish this was like that" or "I didn't care for this so I modified it this way to my liking", etc. but the general concensus was everyone who owned one or had used one, seemed to like them very well.

GO TO THE SOURCE.....

I called Mike Duddy at Lightning Bolt Antennas and talked to him about the finer points of the delta loop vs the standard quad. Mike seems like a really nice guy and is willing to provide you with a lot of useful information without shooting down the competition in the process. After talking to Mike, I ordered the 2 element 5 band delta loop (20M-17M-15M-12M-10M), Model 32MCD/WB. This antenna is rated at 7db gain with 25 db F/B and 50 db sidelobes. At a rated 5.5 sq ft windload and 25 lbs, this antenna was at the upper edge of my selection critieria for overall size but should work out nicely on my 40 foot tower. The antenna seems like a good deal comparing the specs to the price and especially after see the compenents used, I believe it will give a good solid signal on all 5 bands.

To prevent any negative biasing towards other antennas that I had considered, I won't list them here. I'll just say that most of the candidates were in the mini to small 3 to 5 bander category and ranged from $250 to $1000.

IT BEGINS....... DAY 1 26 Sept 2003

I received the package from Lightning Bolt Antennas about 2 weeks after placing an order. Two boxes were delivered by UPS. One was a regular size box with the hubs and hardware. The other was an eight foot long narrow box with the boom, spreaders and boom mounting plate. The packages were opened and inspected and all the contents were accounted for, undamaged. You can see some pictures of the components here prior to assembly.

UV PROTECTION ...... Day 2 27 Sept 03

I decided that although I was waiting to do the main assembly and installation later in October, I would go ahead and assemble the spreaders because I wanted to paint them for extra UV protection. I had asked Mike Duddy about the effects of constant high UV exposure and he informed me that the fiberglas has UV protectant added to the mix when building the spreader rods but I could add non-metallic paint for additional protection. While I was at it I shot a few more pictures of the joints for the hub and spreader tubes prior to painting. These are in the picture directory. Click here to see them. In the photos named Size_Look1 & 2, the dark tube lying next to one of the spreader tubes is a 4 foot (48 in) long fiberglas mast section. This is for comparison only and not part of the Delta Loop.

ASSEMBLY and INSTALLATION ...... through February 2004

Not that it actually took that long to put the antenna together but right after I received the antenna and started to perform the assembly, I had some things come up which required my undivided attention. These persisted through Christmas and into the late winter. I did find some time to mount the spreaders to the hubs. During this time I also built the lower rotor mount needed to attach the whole mess to the top of my medium duty 40 foot tower.

My elmer and high school buddy Steve WB5MFI came out to the desert for a short visit in February 2004 and while he was here I took advantage of captive ham help. We measured, cut and installed the wire elements. Here the old adage of measure twice and cut once was truly realized. If you have never worked with tempered aluminum welding wire, you just haven't really did antenna work. To say this stuff has its own personality is an understatement. Once word of caution, don't let your end go unless the other end is ready to 'receive' because he/she WILL. We found that by stretching it out and cutting the wire, then keeping the ends under control, it was alot easier to manage the wire install.

ANOTHER WAIT but worth it :) ....... through mid June 2004

Once again, work and personal stuff got in the way of fun. Since I was having so much fun, I wanted to share it. So I decided to go off and get married again. Actually I had been spending alot of time flying between CA and Pittsburgh, PA where my fiancee' lived at the time. The antenna project lay mostly dormant until late May 2004.

Once we finally got back home and settled in, I started working on it again. The rotor was mounted and then the boom added. The rotor was turned until the boom was parallel to the ground and approximately 10 foot high. This way I could manage the install of the spreader assemblies onto the boom. Another call to a friend and it was done. The spreader assemblies were positioned so that the bottom of the triangles were parallel to the ground about 3 feet high. The positioning of the special mounting tubes for the wire had to be adjusted for the proper tensioning of the wires. This wasn't difficult but it was time consuming. I wanted to get it right because once the antenna was lifted, the top of the vertical spreader would approxiamtely 60 foot off the ground. My ladder us a bit short!!!!!! Here's a photo of the antenna in this position:

Delta1.jpg The Beast on gnd (Boom @ 10')

Delta4.jpg

Typical problems were found routing the feedline. I used Andrew FSJ4-50B 1/2" hardline with 'N' connectors up to within 2 foot of the rotor. From there, RG-213 was used to flex around the rotor and out to the matching transformer. One note here, on the first install (yep did it twice to fix those pesky overlooks and errors), I found the 10M SWR really high at the low end of the band. Resonance was up around 29.700Mhz according to the MFJ-259 analyzer. I called Mike at LBA and he suggested that the fix was a current choke at the feedpoint. Once the tower was lowered, I redid the transformer end and added 6 ferrite cores. While the tower was down I also fixed a problem with my lower rotor mount, but that is a different story.

Delta2.jpg The Beast @ 40 foot

Once back up, SWR was checked and found to be OK on all bands ranging from almost flat on 20M to up to 17M being a tad bit high at around 1.8:1.

The antenna project was completed in mid June. Since then I have worked a lot of new DX stations and the signal reports have been outstanding. I have been working DX that I never even heard before using the MFJ-1798 vertical.

I am modeling the antenna in EZNEC 3.0 and when I complete the exercise, I will post the results on this website.

If you want to know more about this antenna and my experiences, just email me.

Update Jan 2006:

The delta loop quad has withstood a lot of high winds and UV exposure. It has held up very nicely until late Jan 2006 when I notice that the 10M element had come loose on one end. I now have to drop the tower and rewire the elements. The plan is to rewire each band for individual feed through a remote coax switch which will be mounted on top of the tower. I am in the process of determining what type and length of feedline will be required to match each band tothe current 50 ohm Andrew hardline.


Below is the text of the review I posted on eHAM.Net:

Early summer of 2003, I heard some guys on 20M talking about one of group having a new Lightning Bolt antenna. They were impressed with it and since I was thinking about getting some sort of beam antenna for the high HF bands, I looked into them. I looked at several options prior to deciding on the quad I got. These were both a compact and standard yagi designs, a 5 band Hexbeam by Traffie Technology, and other quad designs.

In Nov 2003, I ordered the Model 32MCD/WB 5 band (20-17-15-12-10) 2 Element Delta Loop antenna from LIGHTNING BOLT ANTENNAS in Volant, PA. I wanted a directional gain antenna on 5 bands but was somewhat limited in the space available for installing and using a fixed budget. The reason for selecting the delta loop vs a standard square quad design boiled down to weight. LBA sells the same antenna in the standard square quad config-uration but the specs call out 0.5 sq ft more wind load and 10 lbs more weight. My target support was a homebrew (salvaged and rebuilt) lightweight military field-use tower that had been reconfigured for tiltover duty and I wanted to keep the weight to less than 40 lbs at the top so the lifting would not be excessive.

As life (and Murphy - he stays at my house most of the time) would have it, I started working on the assembly and install of the 32MCD/WB delta loop antenna system in Nov 2003 but due to other responsibilities, it never saw life until Field Day weekend 2004.

The antenna is really simple to build. The spreaders are quality wound fiberglas with a UV-resistant chemical in the mix (according to Mike at LBA). I added a coat or two of non-metallic grey paint on mine since I live in the upper Mojave Desert of Southern California and we have UV to spare most of the year. The hubs are welded heavy aluminum and color coded for aligning the pre-drilled holes for mounting hubs to boom. Hardware is stainless and heavy duty to last. Basic tools are such as screwdrivers, wrenches, wire cutters, 100' tape measure (a must to be
accurate on cutting element wires to length), etc. are needed.

Another point to make about the 32MCD/WB is its sheer size. After working with this antenna, let me just say that unless your limited like my install is in space and weight requirements, I would seriously consider the square quad design, Model 32MCQ/WB. Same specs, 10 pounds more, but should be a little easier to mange and install. The 32MCD/WB Delta Loop design is essentially a pair of triangles, 21 foot on each side, mounted on an 8' boom. The boom is centered 7 foot up from the bottom side of the triangles. Suffice to say, it is a LARGE array of wires and as such, a little unwieldy. But once in place, it is a sight to behold. I've always admired quads and the 32MCD/WB is no exception. Nice lines and solid design.

The assembly is easy up to the steps in cutting & installing the antenna wire elements. These I consider being the most time consuming and critical. I cannot emphasis enough the importance of having additional help to do this. Also use the rule of "Measure twice (or more) and cut once". Also DO NOT (repeat DO NOT) let the ends of the wire go once they have been cut lest you enjoy trying to unravel a SLINKY. The wire used is 1/16" aluminum alloy welding wire and it has quite an ATTITUDE when left to its own mind. As luck would have it, I had my elmer (WB5MFI Irving, TX) from eons ago visiting this spring when I got around to do the wires and we had a 'blast' working the elements into place. The wires are not clamped into place but rather 'float' inside a tube arrangement that is clamped to the fiberglas spreader. Very ingenious design.

So after everything was assembled and checked and rechecked (no climbing this tower for me), the tower was lifted into place early Sat morning (6-26-2004) with the 32MCD/WB atop a HD-73 rotor ready to work the world. Just for reference I had ran appx 80 foot of FSJ4-50 Andrew 1/2" hardline from the shack up to the top of the tower and used appx 25 foot of RG-213 from hardline to antenna feedpoint.

Initial SWR checks on the ground showed good SWR on all bands except 10M was high being at the top end of the band around 29.6Mhz or so. Here I would like to say that prior to raising the tower, the 20M SWR was almost flat. I was listening and heard a Hawaiian station calling CQ on 20M. I worked him and received a 55 signal report with 100W (TS440S/AT), even with the boom 14' off the ground and antenna pointing west.

Once in the air at appx 40' to the boom, SWR for all bands changed slightly but still OK except for 10M. Signals were a lot stronger than from the G5RV or MFJ-1798 vertical I had been using. I worked several station on Field Day weekend and received very good reports. Initial observations showed the antenna gain and F/B figures to be somewhat under to somewhat over the specified values (varied band to band). More testing will verify specs.

Well as luck would have it, Murphy (I told you he lives at my house) hates a working antenna system and my install was no different. After hoisting up the antenna and using it for a few days of great DXing, the lower rotor mount broke loose (bad design on my part and not a fault of the antenna - had used a pin where hindsight showed it should have been welded which it is now). I lowered the tower and fixed the rotor mount. While I had it down I made a call to Mike at LBA and found out that the 10M SWR problem might have been caused by the coax placement. He suggested a 'bead balun' be installed at the feedpoint, which by the way is a weather sealed balun with a SO-239 to balanced wire mounting arrangement.

I did some analysis and determined that a few well placed heavy duty split ferrite cores mounted just where the coax meets the transformer might work. I had rotated the antenna so the reflector would be lowest on the boom and closest to the ground when the tower was tilted over. I placed the cores on the coax, and taped them into place.

A quick check of the SWR on 10M using the MFJ analyzer showed a marked improvement over the original measurement although still not as low as I would have liked it. It was around a 1.7:1 on the lower part of the phone band. I decided that given the amount of 10M work I was doing right now, I could live with the difference and tweak with the tuner if needed.

Hoisted the tower back up on Saturday (7-10) morning early in time to work a bunch of new prefixes in the IARU HF Championship contest. Rotor mounting is solid and works good now and reports are excellent. SWR is still good on all bands and the 10M resonant point has dropped to 28.4, exactly where I wanted it to be. The SWR is still a bit high, being 1.6:1 but I can live with that. I didn't know what I was missing until I got a good beam antenna. It's like being a new ham all over again. I can already see that DXCC certificate on my shack wall.

I will be doing some more testing and I'm also modeling the 32MCD/WB delta loop in EZNEC 3.0 to see how it should be working. Once completed, I will post the models on my website.

To summarize, the 32MCD/WB is a LARGE wire array (ie quad) and somewhat unwieldy but is lightweight and I would think easily turned with low-end rotors like the CD44, HD-73 or such. Lightweight towers should easily support its windload and size providing you can safely get the antenna up on top. The signal levels I am hearing are tremendous (at least to me). I am hearing many DX signals (Europe, South Pacific, Africa) that I never heard before and at S7 or higher, some peaking at S9+30. This all when the propogation is ok but not spectacular. I can't wait until the next sunspot peak. Another aspect I had always heard and never experienced until now is how quiet the background is on a quad. The vertical always had a high noise floor (around an S4 or higher sometimes) but the delta loop is much quieter at around an S2 or S3. I've have worked a couple of European stations that were as clear as my telephone.

To be fair I must say the only negative thing I would say about the experience is the assembly instructions are a bit rough, being a copy of a typed text and hand drawn diagrams. These could use a bit of polish to ease clarity but after stating this, I can say it works so I must have understood enough, hihi.

Well 73 and be sure and check out Mike's designs at Lightning Bolt Antennas (http://www.lightningboltantennas.com/index.htm) if you are comparing yagis and quads. I don't think you'll be sorry. I know I not. See you on the air.

Now I know what is meant when they say "Ya gotta be able to hear'em to work'em"