Peter Taggart wrote:
Greetings:

Building a 4 square antenna system: How should I tune each
element? should I place a 50 ohm load on three elements then tune
up one using my MFJ 259 after that element is tuned place the 50 ohm
load on it then tune up the next element repeat till all have been
tuned?

OR should I short the other three elements to the counterpoise tune
the element them repeat till all have been tuned?

Or should the three be left floating then tune the one then
repeat till all have been tuned?

It sounds like you're wanting to adjust their impedances. Why? You
realize, of course, that as soon as they're all excited, the element
impedances will change dramatically. One element in a typical 4 square
array will actually have a negative radiation resistance.

There's a lot of information about feeding phased arrays including 4
square arrays in Chapter 8 of the ARRL Antenna Book. It was completely
re-written for the latest (21st) edition. ON4UN's _Low-Band DXing_
contains some good information also.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL