| AE8MM |
Rating:      |
2014-02-23 | |
| Excelent for a vertical |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
QTH limits what I can and cant set up, So I have been limited to Verticals and wire.
Previous to this I had various older cushcraft verticals and was never really too impressed with them.
After my R7 fell apart I went looking for a new antenna and I ended up picking the Titan. And I am glad I did. Good signal reports, does better then some of the wire I have. After minor adjustments the SWR for me was 1.4 or better match on all the bands its advertised for.
Now I will agree with others that the assembly manual left a bit to be desired, some better diagrams would be a help. Its handy to know someone who has put a few of these together. Either way support directly from GAP was excellent.
For a vertical this is a very large and fairly heavy antenna. Regardless what your setup is, I would recommend guying it. Mine is about 8 foot off the ground and is tied down in 3 directions.
There are some dis-similar metals in use, in order to combat that I used a conductive non-ox grease. (no-ox or similar)
After over a year of being in the air and surviving the particularly active 2013 storm season in Ohio it still functions exactly as it did when I first set it up. |
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| KK4EQF |
Rating:      |
2014-02-06 | |
| 154 Countries and going strong |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I have had my Gap Titan for over 2 years now and all I can say is that antenna is a great performer. I have a unique setup and location for it. It is right behind a 40ft oak tree and because I do not have enough room for the counterpoise I've had to reconfigure it. Instead of the square setup my counterpoise heads to my plastic fence then down the property line. It is painted green to blend into my oak tree and palms. I have to say that for DX use I works great. A little noisy because it is a vertical but it outweighs the performance. If you are interested in this antenna and going to hamcation this weekend Gap will have a booth. You can look at my qrz page and look at my logs. |
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| WO8USA |
Rating:      |
2013-11-08 | |
| Nice vertical, good for 40-80 |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Material Quality: 5+
Operation as advertised: 5 (good vertical)
Instructions: 3+
I got this from R&L Electronics after considering all the antennas on the market and the location I had and needs. I wanted to complent my Traffie Hexbeam and wanted a good 40-80m antenna in a small place. Did not want the radial farm and decided this was the antenna. Amazing that it does what it says, no SWR issues. Great 40m performance during CQWWDX 2013 phone, did not get to try much on 80m. It is tall, I decided to use the DX Engineering mount to raise it. I highly recommend light guys slightly above the center to keep it from swaying and stressing the mount too much. Mine is post mounted on a 4x4 10 feet off the ground. Search and you will see some excellent suggestins on guying as well as ways to keep the radials from drooping. No trouble with an amplifier.
Good SWR, <1.5 across the high bands, I have made no adjustments on low bands. Its not a beam, but offers nice multi-band, omni direction coverage. My main use is for 40/80m and also for PSK andops froma remote location when I cannot turn my Hexbeam. But you must give it some guys, not too hgh up becasue you may snap it in the center. But this is a heavy duty antenna, qulaity materials.
Be prepared: read directions 2-3x before you even start, you need lots of room to assemble on ground, it took me 3 hours in a relaxed mode to get together, make sure you do not rush ahead on instructions or you will disassemble. You really do need two sawhorses. Instructions could be improved, check internet for some nice pictures.
A complaint: for $400 I should not have to put my own SO-239 on the end. Hardest part was getting the yellow coax out the little hole and sticking the connector on...soldering outside?
73 Chris WO8USA |
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| AB9UU |
Rating:     |
2013-10-11 | |
| Working well despite not ideal placement |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I initially had trouble with placing the Titan as it is quite windy where I live at times. It blew over twice. This was my fault and not the Titan's. It is now guyed much better and does not move. It functions well on 40 meters and up, but 80 meters is a problem as sometimes it will not tune easily. Of course Gap tells you it has a narrower band with on 80 meters so this is no surprise. On other bands 20 and above, it usually needs no tuner or if it does, it does not require much help to make my amp happy.
It is not as loud most of the time as is my G5RV on 40 and 80 that I also have up.
However, my placement of the Titan puts it at a disadvantage to start with, as the Gap Titan is on the roof but surrounded BY TALLER BUILDINGS on several sides at close proximity. I also have lots of power lines in the area being in an ultra urban area. Still during the day I can get out easily to Flagstaff and Phoenix and occasionally Germany with it on 18 meters. I bet if I raise it a bit, it will even work better. So the bottom line is that I like it and plan on keeping it and raising it once I am able (had surgery).
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| AA8KY |
Rating:      |
2013-09-09 | |
| Excellent |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| I bought the GAP Titan DX antenna from a dealer who recommended it to me. I mounted it on a mast with a bracket under the gutter and cemented it in the ground. When I first tried it I heard more DX than I ever imagined. When I tested the SWR it was within reasonable range on every band. I have worked 4 continents in two weeks and I'm guessing 50 countries. The best part is I am running 100 watts and even during pileups I am busting through and making the contact even against guys who are running amps. I highly recommend this antenna, especially if you have a small area for an antenna. I am very happy with this antenna. It is the best vertical I have ever owned. |
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| W7ZZZ |
Rating:      |
2013-03-12 | |
| The Best Vertical! |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I have had a Gap Titan for many, many years. It has survived 4 moves, assembled and dis-assembled each time. I have worked every state and over a hundred counties with it. It is a truly awesome piece of gear that does what it says they'll do. At this QTH, right on the Pacific Ocean, it has been eating salt water spray since August 2007. I have it mounted up 15 foot on a rusty pipe, so that it just clears the top of my garage and I guy it about two thirds of the way up with 3/16 dacron. It has survived 85 mph winds several times. I run a KW into it every day and walk the planet...hear them? Nail them! Recomended without reserve! If you can only have one antenna, get this one. |
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| KA1UVJ |
Rating:      |
2013-02-22 | |
| Whats wrong? |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I purchased the Titan probably 10 years ago. Assembly was not hard if you focus on the directions. I dont understand why people put this antenna down. I took it down as I got out of HF. I just reassembled it, and was worried about my install location. I mounted on the side of a tower with a standoff I guess about 3 feet. The counterpoise actually goes around the tower. It is about 7 feet to the conterpoise from the ground. I did use the proper mounting brackets and all. To my surprise the antenna performs great. SWR is excellent on every band except 15 meters and its not incredibly high, so a quick fine tune and it will be excellent. Everyone buys store bought antennas, slaps them together carelessly and then blames the manufacturer. All it takes is a little time and patience and any antenna can work. You may have to experiment some and educate yourself. If you dont have the patience to do that, then you really are in the wrong hobby. Thats what ham radio was and should still be all about.
I gave it a 5 because it does perform as good as gap claims, actually better in my situation. Maybe I got lucky.
I did have a quick qso with it on 40 meters with folks 500 miles away and everyone had good reports. I was running about 100 watts.
But it does beat having wires hanging all over. If i didnt have kids and a great dane to you wires down, then who knows. I will do more experimenting with it on other bands as time allows. But the way it was recieving I would expect good results, as I check SWR on the bands I was able to hear stations 15 - 20 over 9 on about every band. It could be interacting with the tower also and helping it out some how.
I am feeding it with about 20 ft of rg 8x (mini 8 ) coax. And I didnt have an extra connector and wasnt about to run to town for one. I spliced it with a butt connector and folded bother braids over it and over lapped them. Sealed it up pretty good and another surpise it worked well. I cant fault anything on it, no matter how it performs because of how i set it up. I did guy up the counter poise and I will guy off antenna sunday as it is supposed to be nice weather. And to make it less messy in the back yard, im thinking of making something to bolt to tower thats non conductive and brace the top of the antenna with it. |
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| NJ6W |
Rating:      |
2012-11-26 | |
| Much better than I expected! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Assembly was quick and easy, I supported it on a pair of sawhorses. I found the instructions clear and concise and there were no missing parts. I mounted the assembled antenna temporarily in the middle of my lawn on a 5-ft mast for tuning. In point of fact, no tuning was required as everything was within spec as assembled (I used an MFJ 269B). I then installed it on a 15-ft mast next to my house--the counterpoise was about 18-in above the roof at the nearest point. A recheck of the tuning revealed only insignificant changes.
I hooked up the antenna to my Elecraft KX3 with a 75-ft length of RG 8X and I was off and running. In 3 weeks, I have worked 50 countries and 34 states using SSB with 12 watts. Best performance has been on 17 through 10 meters followed by 40 and 20. The 80 meter band is pretty quiet, but then I am not on the air much at night. The Elecraft KX3 has a built in automatic tuner which I normally leave on, but I've found that the performance of the setup is essentially the same with or without the tuner engaged. |
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| K6YEK |
Rating:      |
2012-10-26 | |
| Great for limited space and outstanding bang for your bucks. |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
I have limited space to put up an antenna, limited room for a tower and no room for the typical dipole. The Titan-DX fit the bill for an antenna to be mounted on my roof (16' above the ground)with radials. The antenna arrived in excellent condition and took about an hour to build. The instructions were clear and easy to follow. The only delay in getting on the air was scheduling assistance in mounting it on the roof.
The swr was under 1.5 across all bands except for a small portion of 75m (3.2), the top end of 40m (1.8) and 6m (1.2 to 2.8). The antenna tuner in my Yaesu FT-950 brought the swr to 1.1 across all bands except for 6m (1.2). I know that the Titan-DX is not advertised as working on 6m, but it does work. They don't advertise is for 6m as they haven't tested it on 6m.
Had a couple of questions and called GAP. Chris was very friendly and helpful. They have great customer service and a fantastic product. As a newly re-minted ham (getting my license back after a 45 year absence and getting up to speed on the technology of today), it was nice to know that there wasn't anything I could do to harm the antenna running 100 watts.
The first few days of operating, I had great signal reports from throughout the US, Canada and the South Pacific. In the months since, the good signal reports continue to come in. Am very pleased with the results from my 100w signal.
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| W8SMF |
Rating:     |
2012-10-16 | |
| Some issues but this antenna works! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| Excellent support from Rich and Chris at Gap. The Titan assembly and install (on a GAP Tilt Mount and a 6' pipe) went smoothly, but some bands out of spec. After correcting a mistake they caught, there were still spec problems, particularly on 30M, 15M and 12M. It seems that I had run into a rare problem: 15M has a broad resonance at 21.000, but the best I could get was 1.8-2.0 over the 21.000 to 21.100 band segment (I work CW), and that is where it stands today. 30M is a "compromise band" and there no tuning adjustments available. My Titan resonates at 9.9 MHz and the best SWR in-band is 2.5:1. Rich speculates that the 30M and 15M problems are related. 12M had a good SWR above band, and I extended the 'short extension' on the middle rod to it's limits and adding a 3" extension rod, and now have excellent SWR across that band. 40M had great SWR high in the band. I optimized to the low end by attaching a 3" wire extension to the end of the long counterpoise wire and now have 1.2:1 or better from 7.000 to 7.100. In a week I have had great results on all bands 40-10 (except 30), including some pileups, running 100 W into the Titan. If you are careful and patient you will end up with a very good antenna (and no buried radials!). |
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