I have built a doublebay gray-hoverman made from pvc like many on this site. I used a reflector made of rabbit cage wire.
My question is: How much good/bad would it do if I split the screen into four individual sections as opposed to one big screen now?
Also, do I need to taper the outer edges according to some of the posts?
Thanks:confused:

I tried spiltting mine up into 4 sections and leaving a gap down the center and it turned out to be a huge pain, I used hardware cloth and it kept wanting to curl up which warped the whole antenna. If your rabbit cage material lays flat and you have plenty of excess to work with it may be easier to do, not sure if it would improve performance though.

Splitting the mesh into right and left sections with a 1 inch vertical gap provides almost 1 db additional gain for free. Splitting the mesh into top and bottom sections provides no additional gain.

Based on Xautos rough testing and JEDs models, butterflying the vertical 1 inch gap from 1 inches in the middle to 3 1/2 inches at the top/bottom seems to increase gain at the top and bottom channels at the expense of gain for the middle channels. In other words, it smooths out the gain curve.

Like Dr. Nick noted, splitting mesh into four sections negates the structual benefits of the mesh.