TAK-tenna...Really that good/

[IRABREN]

Well, Dan you may be absolutely correct - but then how do you explain the excellent/outstanding rating of the "Ham Universe" review ? - An advertisement for the Tak-tenna ??( fraud ?? ) Reviewer - a good buddy of designer ??
The Ham Universe reviewer - presumably knows something about antennas and ham radio. ( deception ??) I don't disagree - with what people are saying in this thread - it makes sense that the design of the antenna would not - "make it that good" - However - I personally have yet to try it - so I will reserve final judgement.
Ira, KE5STP

[WA8MEA]

This is why I hate the term "unbiased" when customers review products or services over the Internet.

I assume they are claiming bias because of possible advertising dollars spent with the magazines/websites/radio programs which review products.

Nothing is more BIASED than an online reviewer who:

1) Really doesn't know what he/she is talking about
2) Is a disgruntled employee or customer
3) Is a a competitor from another company
4) As been coerced into putting a favorable review on eHam because they will win a FREE GIFT from the company
5) The reviewer expects something for nothing (Like this recent Icom IC-718 reviewer.  Best dam radio for the money!  But for $500, many cheapo hams want scopes, audio synthesizers and other assorted bells and whistles found on a $5000 rig.)

73, Bill - WA8MEA

[WA4DOU]

For $128 you can buy a copy of the Radio Amateurs Antenna Book and make a real antenna for the $88 remaining.

[K0OD]

This log is provided as proof how well the Tak-tenna performs:
http://www.tak-tenna.com/KB4QQJ%20WAS%20Log.htm

First, I doubt many newbies recognize that those October 27/28, 2007 DX contacts were made during a contest where 59 reports are standard.

Two very rare 40 meter SSB Qs stand out amid the ordinary Caribbean and EU big guns: 6A7YRR, said to be in Egypt, and AP5A logged as Pakistan.

I operated that whole weekend on 40 in the CQWW SSB and don't remember seeing those spotted. Based on nearly 50 years of contesting, I was dubious that such juicy contacts could be made with 5 watts into a Tak-tenna. So I ran those calls thru Google and DX Summit and came up with nothing. (AP5A is shown as a possible pirate in 2006)

The 6A prefix is allocated to Egypt but it is surely a busted call or something else.

There ARE some decent Qs in the log including a couple of big contest stations in Morocco. Those were worked on 20, not 40 meters. Morocco is one of the world's great DX locations.  

[W1EBR]

I have one of the 40m Tak-tennas, and I just purchased  EZNEC+ 5.0. I don't want to create the antenna description data by hand. Is there an algorithmic way to create the segments of a spiral, or is there a plain text format I can use as input (and output would be nice too) of an antenna description (and then maybe I'll write a short program to create the spirals with the proper dimensions?

I do want to say that Steve offered excellent support - even "pro-active" support, checking up on how I was doing in trying his suggestions to tune the SWR.

I want to understand this antenna better. I don't have a lot of free time but I can run calculations on my PC while I am doing other things :-)

Gene Risi, W1EBR