So I purchased a used Gap Titan DX off of EBAY. The previous owner was located about 2 hours south of me so I was able to pick the antenna up from his home and bring it back to my QTH. The 80 Meter portion was tuned for 3.8MHz but a quick call to GAP Antennas put a new capacitor in the mail that should put me down closer to the 3.55MHz that I would like to center on for CW and RTTY. Of course I have a 3 element STEPPIR on a 50 foot tower so this will be my second antenna setup. My XYL is THRILLED!!!! ;-) After I put up the elevated guy system, she said no more towers in the yard. THIS IS NOT A TOWER!!! ;-)
The documentation with the antenna is fairly detailed with out a lot of drawings. It seems fairly easy to put together but then again I am fortunate in the fact that this antenna has been put up before and has some of the more complex sections already put together. I suppose I may be singing a different tune once I actually put the pieces together. I expect to get my exercise when it comes to tuning the antenna for 40 meters. If you are not familiar with the Titan DX, the counterpoise loop tunes 40 meters.
I placed an order for a guy kit from Gap Antenna, a coax ground assembly with bulkhead from DX Engineering and some LMR600UF (my go to station coax) and Polyphaser from Antenna Farm. I plan on mounting the antenna on a chimney mount that is already in place. The guy kit was purchased because GAP recommends not putting the antenna on a chimney mount with out one!!
The Titan DX is actually a vertical dipole and as such needs no radials to function. I modeled the antenna in EZNEC and if the results were accurate, the antenna is not exactly omni-directional on all bands. Gain wise, the antenna is probably a pretty good performer on 20 and 40 meters but 10 and 15 meters may not be all that great. On the air time will tell. Again these results are based on an attempted tape measure derived duplication of the antenna in EZNEC. I was unable to get the 80 meter cap incorporated into the model so that may also be skewing the results. I will be enhancing the model as I learn more about EZNEC so I will probably write up some more quantitative results as I improve the model.
I am currently waiting on the delivery of the coax and a warm day to put this thing up so once again I am at the mercy of Illinois weather.
Thanks for reading my first post for 2013. Comments are always welcome.
Until next time
73
Ron
WM9Q
