TAK-tenna Product Reviews

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Reviews Categories | Antennas: HF Directional (Yagi, quad, log periodic, etc) | TAK-tenna

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Reviews Summary for TAK-tenna

	Reviews: 117	Average rating: 4.6/5	MSRP: $148 USD
	Description: High-frequency antenna for 3 to 30 MHz., inclusive TAK-tenna is Unique and has been awarded U.S. Patent. Radiating elements use proprietary copper jacketed alloy Rotatable - Portable - Stealth - Primary & Restricted Space Very easy to assemble Sturdy and well built with low wind load Weighs only 5 pounds Very small footprint >p>TAK-tenna 80 Multibander has a 48 inch boom All other models have a 30 inch boom. Direct feed with 50 or 75 ohm coax on resonant band User chooses resonant frequency Use coax + antenna tuner...or twin lead + antenna tuner for off resonance operation Power tested to 1000 CW watts at resonance Key down for 30 seconds and 1400 Watts PEP no heat sensed on antenna wire or coax feed point when touched by hand after power testing High efficiency = NO lossy matching components anyplace in system Directivity = 10 to 14 dB signal increase in transmit with 90 degree rotation with horizontal orientation Vertical orientation provides omni-directional pattern Shipping world wide
	Product is in production.
More info: http://www.tak-tenna.com/

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SV1EEX Rating: 5/5 Aug 27, 2011 09:41 Send this review to a friend

Simply excellent stealth antenna! Time owned: more than 12 months

Hello dear friends. I am not affiliated with Steve or any seller of this antenna. After two and a half years of having this antenna (40m ver), I managed to work more than 100 dxcc entities in total taking into account every band that my tuner would allow (40-6m). I have worked it portable or in balcony. Both hor. or vert. pol. seem to work but the best results for my case were in in vert. Here is a snapshot of my balcony setup http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/695/img0637aq.jpg/ . If you also have tech-scared neighbours or silly forbiding building laws it might be a good solution to get you in the world of HF.
A lot of ppl think that the coaxial is the radiator. I have spent a lot of hours operating qrp close to the antenna when portable with less than 1.5m aircell-5 coaxial. I don't believe that in my setup the coaxial contributes to the total antenna radiation. To test further if this was correct I borrowed another 40m tak-tenna. I also tried to isolate the new antenna with 1:1 balun and put it up with the same coaxial length close to each other. There was no significant difference in my rx from others although sometimes things where a bit worse if I use the balun version by 1s unit on higher bands. Also a field meter didn't reveal any excessive radiation close to the coaxial without the balun. I am not yet conclusive 100% on multiband operation and I would suggest that others could perform similar tests but it seems that for the 40m operation I got the same exactly results in reports. I take my hat off for Steve for his out-of-this-planet support and positive ideas.
He will be definately help you with all issues(if any) that might come up. I am sorry to see that some people didn't make it with this antenna. It is really unlikely that I will press my ptt answering any cq and not be heard on 40m(even if operating qrp).

KJ2P Rating: 5/5 May 7, 2011 14:06 Send this review to a friend

18 Month Followup- Great! Time owned: more than 12 months

My Tak-Tenna has been up for 18 months, and it's still a winner. It's up 27 ft, on a mast made from scrap steel tubing. With my Flex 5000 barefoot at 100 watts, my farthest contacts have been South Africa, Moscow, and Argentina from my QTH in NY, US. I particularly love busting pileups on the first call.
The performance is so close to a previous 66 ft wire dipole, that I removed the dipole. Instead of wire over my wife's garden, this little Tak-Tenna peaks out over the top of a Colorado spruce.
After carefully resonating it during installation, I still have SWR below 2.0 from 7.01 to 7.223, with the best SWR of 1.3 at 7.155. It is certainly usable on 17M and 15M, too, but with higher reflected power and SWR (still below 3.0).
In the 18 months (and two winters) it's been up in the air, total maintenance has been one tilt down for inspection, and then right back up in the air.
I recently put in a kilowatt amp, the SPE Expert. The Tak-Tenna has taken it in stride, all the way up to 1200 watt peaks. Even with a kilowatt, I've never had an instance of RF-in-the-shack (good engineering practices, like grounding both ends of the coax, certainly help).
It works, and I'm happy.

K7CID Rating: 5/5 Feb 18, 2011 09:34 Send this review to a friend

Exceptional small profile antenna Time owned: 3 to 6 months

I've used this in a small backyard where I have HOA issues. From my QTH (Las Vegas) I have made several long distance QSO's, including one recently to Toyko, Japan. Highly recommend this antenna for those who have limited space or community restrictions.

AJ4YQ Rating: 4/5 Feb 4, 2011 18:08 Send this review to a friend

Great for small footprint Time owned: 6 to 12 months

I bought the Tak Tenna several months ago. I live on base at Camp Lejeune and had to go through the frequency coordinator to put up the antenna. When conditions are right, the antenna works great. My farthest contact was Germany at about 2PM on a Sunday Afternoon pushing 100 watts. I put the antenna on a TV mast and placed a 2 meter delta loop on top without any degradation of signal. I am quite happy with it. I plan to take it down and clean it up a bit because of all the hard weather we have been having. Overall, I like it and will probably buy another from Steve...perhaps a 20 meter. You can see the pictures on QRZ.com

KA3TOR Rating: 5/5 Jan 15, 2011 09:02 Send this review to a friend

Job Well done Steve! Time owned: 0 to 3 months

Thank you Steve for producing a Great small profile antenna, the apartment has granted me permission to put one up.

My first contact was to KB3UHN in BALTIMORE, MD on the 40m band phone with a 58 signal report as the band was closing out!

I say this is the next best thing since SLICED BREAD.

I had no trouble tuning and the MFJ antenna analyzer made the process very easy, and less time consuming.

Steve is always there to help out when needed over the phone or over the net by way of email, and I like the customer support he has for his buyers and future customers.

The 40 Multibander was so great that I have decided to purchase a dedicated 20-Meter version. My hat is off to you Steve!

73 to all de ka3tor

KT7F Rating: 5/5 Dec 13, 2010 19:27 Send this review to a friend

Very Happy Time owned: 0 to 3 months

The TAK-Tenna performs as advertised and it went together nicely. The instructions are accurate and easy to follow. It took me about 2 hours because I had to do it single handed. That's correct, I only have one hand and it was still easy and fun to assemble.

I was curious why Steve did not include a SO-239 connection. I asked Steve this question and his reply was untrustworth parts supply quality. I believe his exact words were, "quality varies like a sine wave from off-shore sources;". He also feels that hard wiring is more durable in an outdoors environment. I'm not arguing this point, but I did not want to give up the flexability of my PL-259 connector on my Belden 9913 transmission line, so I made a SO-239 connector. That added to the assembly time.

The antenna tuned up perfectly on 40m 15m ,ok on 10m and adequate for PSK-31 on 20m. I tuned 40m for the CW portion of the band and was under 1.8:1.

I have it horizontally mounted on a 12' foot pole on my balcony. After being antenna challenged for so many years due to antenna restrictions, and a very poor strealth antenna, I was able to work Asiatic Russia, RTOC, on 40m CW during the CW Sweepstakes. While I cannot verify it, I believe I worked RTOC long path. If correct that would be 16,000 + miles from my QTH. Nice to be heard again.

Congratulations to Tak-Tenna on making a very functional antenna at a very affordable price.

73
Tim Factor, KT7F.

K4UZM Rating: 5/5 Dec 11, 2010 16:38 Send this review to a friend

Worked as advertised, Excellent Customer Servive! Time owned: 0 to 3 months

All I can say is WOW.

Talk about customer service. I sent an e-mail to Steve to ask a question about one of his 20 meter antennas. Within a half-hour he called me on the phone. He called me! We talked for a long time about how the antenna works, its geometry, how to bring it back to OEM specifications, and how to tune it. Now for the most amazing part: I didn’t even buy the antenna from Tak-Tenna! I picked it up at a HamFest from a Ham that couldn’t get it to work. That Ham had bought it from yet another ham who also couldn’t tune it.

I had to make it work. I repaired the antenna back to the way it was sent out from Tak-Tenna. Then I placed it on a small table outside the garage and hooked up my MFJ antenna analyzer and tuned it the way that Steve told me on the phone. Within two minutes I had a 1.2 to 1 SWR. Next I put it up on a 12 foot fiberglass pole and re-tuned it in less then five minutes .

That was seven minutes and one phone call with Tak-Tenna. Two Hams spent who knows how much time adding wire and cutting wire off to make the antenna work. Too bad they didn’t ask Steve when they couldn’t get it to tune. Oh well. Their loss is MY gain.

So does it work?

I went in the house and got out my FT-817 and hooked it up to the antenna. When I turned it on there was a station in Massachuset (KC1HD) coming in, so I gave him a call and had a nice QSO with him about the antenna and the weather here in Florida. He gave me a 5-3 report, and I gave him a 5-9 report. Not bad using my 817 and about 4 or 5 watts. It gets better..... When I unhooked the station I saw that I was actually using low power-- 2.5 watts SSB over 1000 miles.

Did it work as well as my dipole?

I don’t know as I didn’t try it. What I can say is that if I lived some place where I wasn’t allowed antennas I would have had a great QSO anyway. Also I could have walked around with this and my QRP rig -- try that with a dipole.

Follow up:

Steve called me back to see how I did. Customer service..... WOW. This is the way all Customer Service should be.

Review:

Two thumbs up!

73, K4UZM Dave

KE5WCT Rating: 5/5 Nov 24, 2010 10:53 Send this review to a friend

Outstanding portable antenna Time owned: more than 12 months

I have the Tak-Tenna 40 Meter, and have used it in portable operations since 2008. When I first used it, I was attached to the Texas State Guard. My function was to provide field communications while on drill or assigned operations. I used my own equipment (since the guard had none at that time). My first contact was from Wylie Texas, in the parking lot of the National Guard Armory. I worked W4JD (special call for the first annual BBQ cook off at Jack Daniels in Tennessee. My RS report was 59 (10/S9) on SSB. I have since continued the antenna and have migrated to digital modes with a great deal of success. Using an MFJ-969 tuner, I am able to achieve an SWR of 1.5:1 or better on all band 10 through 40 meters. In comparison, I also have a GAP Titan DX multi-band vertical and while working digital, have seen very little difference between the two antennas.
Any one who does not have the space for any type of standard antenna, or who would like to operate portable HF, this is the way to go.
73/KE5WCT

KB1QBZ Rating: 4/5 Nov 2, 2010 17:55 Send this review to a friend

Good For What It Is Time owned: more than 12 months

I've been using the TAK-tenna 40 for about a year as a portable antenna. Construction was about as expected based on the instructions and comments on the TAK-tenna website. It took a bit of time to get the SWR down, but once I had it, I had it. I have since discovered that using a relatively inexpensive antenna analyzer from Autek Research makes it a lot easier to get the TAK right, as well as other portable antennas such as the Buddipole.

I first tried the TAK as a horizontal dipole about 10ft off the ground on a tripod in my backyard. I could hear a lot but couldn't work them -- not surprising since a 40 meter horizontal dipole 10ft off the ground is mainly going to warm the clouds.

I then switched the TAK-tenna to vertical orientation (a vertical dipole) mounted on the tripod and have had success getting into the West Coast, South America, and Europe from various sites in the Northeast (as well as into the Southeast and Midwest). The highlight so far has been taking it to the Marconi site at the Cape Cod National Seashore on Cape Cod. It was a slow day so the park rangers let me set it up on one of the concrete slabs that once anchored Marconi's massive antenna. I got solid 59s from Scotland, England, and Eastern Europe (Serbia, Croatia, Greece, and the Ukraine) on 25 watts.

I have also had good results with the TAK-tenna from the tops of tall buildings (10-15 stories) in a horizontal orientation -- again, not surprising when the dipole is 120-180 ft above ground.

To be fair, I've had equally good results using a Buddipole configured as a vertical dipole. And equally poor results using the Buddipole as a horizontal dipole.

Taken for what it is, it's a good antenna. You do need to understand propogation characteristics of horizontal and vertical antennas when operated at low heights above ground and you should know how to best match single-band antennas when they're used for multi-band purposes.

KD7HVL Rating: 2/5 Sep 16, 2010 14:12 Send this review to a friend

anything can be made into an antenna Time owned: 6 to 12 months

I was given a TAK 40 from a friend in PHX he could not get it to work very well. the SWR he could get down, but just could not get out with it, poor signal both recieve and transmit, thus in fustration he gave it to me. I played with it a few months and I to could get the SWR down and get it to take power, but I to could not get it to work very well, when compared to just about any other antenna I had up, verticle, dipole, Vee , I gave it away to yet another ham in the north part of the state of Arizona. My conclusion is a 100 watt lite bulb can be used as a pretty effective antenna, if you get it up high enough, and this antenna is better than that, but not by much. Sorry Tak-tenna but I really have to call it like I see it. Maybe its the desert heat that makes this antenna a non preformer.

I was able to make a few contacts with this antenna to other stations that presented strong signals. Weaker signals where a no joy.

I did check this antennas' feed line for RF current once I had it up, and I detected no current in the feed line using the field strength meter method and a florescent tube (small lite bullb) method. I feel the antenna was getting the brunt of the power.

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