One detail of construction that can help: When you're done winding the wire, make sure it stays attached to the paddles. Just gluing didn't work for me and I almost had a disaster of having it coming unraveled. In the picture you can see the wire is held to the paddle with a dowel rod tied down with tie wraps. So make sure the paddle is wider than the 24 wires by at least an inch so you can drill holes for the tie wraps.

I had to move the antenna into a attic via a narrow opening. I unattached the wires from only 2 paddles (not adjacent) and was able to collapse the antenna to a narrower profile.