We describe the selection of candidate radio-loud quasars obtained by cross-matching radio source positions from the low-frequency (151-MHz) 7C survey with optical positions from five pairs of EO POSS-1 plates scanned with the Cambridge Automatic Plate-measuring Machine (APM). The sky region studied is centred at RA=10h28m, DE=+41{deg} and covers ~0.057sr. We present VLA observations of the quasar candidates, and tabulate various properties derived from the radio maps. We discuss the selection criteria of the resulting '7CQ' sample of radio-loud quasars. The 70 confirmed quasars, and some fraction of the 36 unconfirmed candidates, constitute a filtered sample with the following selection criteria: 151-MHz flux density S_151_>100mJy; POSS-I E-plate magnitude E~R<20; POSS-I colour (O-E)<1.8; the effective area of the survey drops significantly below S_151_~200mJy. We argue that the colour criterion excludes few if any quasars, but note, on the basis of recent work by Willott et al. (1998MNRAS.300..625W), that the E magnitude limit probably excludes more than 50 per cent of the radio-loud quasars.

Cone search capability for table J/MNRAS/307/293/7CQ (Summary of the radio and optical properties of the candidate 7CQ quasars: main (table1) and subsidiary (table2) samples)