[Antennas] Antenna Modeling software

[Steve L.]

I've been using Nittany Scientific's "NEC-Win Plus+"
for nearly two years and while I have nothing to
compare it to, I really like it a lot. W4RNL has a
very good self-study book that will literally teach
you modeling with examples and stuff on a disk so you
can start slowly and work up to some pretty complex
stuff.

Two years ago someone on this antenna line posted
something like "Why not get your own copy of a good
modeling program and do your OWN modeling?". It struck
me as obvious and true and started me on this fabulous
journey of modeling.

It's not hard to learn, you don't have to be an
engineer or even understand how antennas work, it's
not expensive especially when you consider all the
time and materials you'll saved by NOT building stupid
designs and wasting all that wire/aluminum/coax.

Once you get familiar with it, you can design whole
'what-if' antenna farms without leaving your chair or
wasting tons of time building things that don't work.
You can verify things like interaction of adjacent
antennas (how close can they be?) and what's the
effect of stacking antennas, etc. I did this and won
the CW SS contest two years in a row for WWA using all
home modeled and built wire-array antennas and a 20
year old TS830S rig. Well, I have 110' tall trees and
several acres, but still!

What struck me the most was how accurately the final
products tracked the models, I'd shift feedpoints and
put in matching stubs/series transmission line
transformers to get a good coax match or wider
bandwidth or something and once built they worked
within a tiny margin of the models numbers. Amazing!

I've done antennas from 160m elevated-radial top-hat
capacity loaded verticals to 12-element 70cm yagis and
actually built them - every single one of them worked
well.

So, I repeat the words that got me started: Get a good
modeling program, learn how to use it and really
expand your understanding of antennas and feedlines.
Your hilarious failures are done in the privacy of
your own home and you will learn something vital with
every failure.

And you will want to buy an antenna analyer, too. Oh,
and a bunch of books. Lots of books, you'll even
understand most of whats in them after you model for a
while!

End of lecture. Resume normal thoughts if you can.
Steve N4SL Machias, WA CN88xa

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