Salvatore Bologna of Helical Technologies in Rockledge Florida had his new quadrifilar uhf antenna at Orlando Hamcation. Sal wanted to test it on my satellite demo station to see how it performed against the Arrow antenna we were using.
We set up an A/B switch on the UHF port of the IC910H so we could switch between their quadrifilar and the Arrow on a tripod. We tried it on FO-29 and SO-50 during two passes. The results were not surprising. The Arrow always did better but the quad did hear stations. They were just down a few db depending on the elevation.
Their quad is housed in a pvc tube and was on a 10' pvc mast. It is very stealthy and that's a nice characteristic of the antenna. If you live in antenna restricted area, this antenna will pass for a vent pipe or as part of a flagpole. But there is no way this antenna can perform as well as a 7 el beam adjusted for proper polarity. But it does work and you can hear stations on FO-29. SO-50 is a much weaker bird and signals were weak on the quad. But you could hear stations and you could make contacts.
There is a video of my demo station at Hamcation on youtube.com You can see Sal sitting in back of the radio, flipping the A/B antenna switch during the passes. The audio is not perfect so it may be hard to hear the difference between the antennas.
They are working on a vhf version. Their website is helicomtech.com
Antenna selection depends on many different factors. You write down your objectives and then consider your constraints when making your decision to purchase. Every case may be a little different.
73, John K8YSE