Fritz,
I have an R-7 currently laying in the yard. I'm not
a big vertical fan, but have to say that it did work as
advertised. Unfortunately, the fibreglass insulator used
to hold the antenna on the 'base' doesn't last forever if
it's in the sun very much (mine was).
It wasn't really all that hard to tune, just follow the
recomendations. Don't expect much bandwidth on 40 meters!
It's also fairly sensitive to 'where/how' you mount it.
I tuned mine on a fence post, then tried to move it to the
top of my house. Worked great on the post, terrible on the
roof. Too lazy to re-tune, so just mounted it on the post.
Still not a vertical fan, but I think I got my money's
worth out of the R-7 (10-15 years?).
'Doc