Update, just to let you know I've not forgotten y'all.
-Assembled it. Some of the parts are rather crudely cut and slightly misaligned, but all goes together as described even if not as straight and square as the pictures show. (Assembled in the basement to stay out of the rain, of which plenty here recently. You remember the old joke about building a boat in the basement? Well, it's a good thing my basement garage door is on grade.)
-Mounted on a piece of pipe lashed to the deck rail, about 14 ft above the ground, and a dozen feet from the side of the house. This is temporary, of course, the final location will be some ten feet higher, more or less.
Got things all together and flipped the switch on the ps and xceiver. Smoke test passed, nothing burned up.
Bear in mind that green isn't really an apt description of my hammism. If there is a more descriptive term for a no nothing newb, apply it to me NOW. What follows is heavily colored by that.
First up, play with the xceiver, learn a bit of the knobs and buttons, try to spin the dials and find something to listen to for a bit. Success!! Speaks Spanish, but at least the receive works and the coax isn't dangling someplace--. As expected due to time of day, QRN is very high, a 5 on the meter. The antenna is supposed to be good for 2, 6, 10, 15, 20, and 40. My xceiver won't do 2, so the obvious didn't happen. Eventually over several days, was able to find signals on all the rest of the listed bands, plus on 80 and 160 however unintelligible. Skipped listening on WARC bands, didn't seem worth the effort.
Transmit testing, well that's part of the learning process, too. I am not mic shy, had plenty of practice on CB years ago. Still, I'm unsure of what is going on out there in the world of other bands, other power settings, other modes. So --
Pushing the auto tune button on all bands got the expected results, off scale and/or out of range everywhere except 20 meters where it came on scale top to bottom without trimming the capacitance whiskers. Knowing just enough to be dangerous, keyed up and tried calling BTPost several times over the next couple days with no luck. Also did CQ a couple times with no response. (Tried several different power settings with the same success. Also spun the mast from E-W to N-S to see if that made a difference, it didn't.) It's worth the note that yesterday, got hit with heavy rain. After the rain quit, I hooked things up and got nowhere. Even on 20 meters, the SWR was out of range. I guess the coils on the antenna do not like wetness.
There you have it to date. Next up, study on the external tuner and see if that will drive things into compliance, even at way reduced efficiency. At this point, I've not found a borrowable antenna analyzer, but will keep looking. I have to think that actual tuning of the antenna will be worth the effort.
ETA 7/9: Did some reading on antenna trimming. Several sources say to start trimming on the highest freq first on multi-band antennas. The directions for this antenna tell me to start on the lowest. Now, I am for sure confuddled and befused. Perhaps worth the note, the external tuner was able to drive the SWR on 20 meters well down, like under 1.5. Knowing that is just fooling the transmitter, trimming is yet to be done. Then the power company called and tells me that there will be interruptions to the power this afternoon, so shut everything down and did housework instead of useful stuff. Rats.