My very first exposure to computing of any sort was modeling antenna patterns. We had an old DOS version of Mininec3 at Hipas Observatory that I used to design a 16 x17 element Yagi array for an ionospheric radar. The measured pattern on the finished array turned out textbook perfect. Needless to say, this greatly boosted my confidence in computer modeling...at least of antennas.
Mininec3, by the way, was written in BASIC, but borrowing most of its algorithms from the original Lawrence Livermore NEC2 (Numeric Electric Code). Mininec3 was the first antenna modeling program that didn't take a mainframe computer to run. (Golly...that was only 20 years ago...how times have changed!)
Since that time, a plethora of antenna modeling packages have shown up, most based on the original NEC2 code.....for good reason...nobody's been able to improve significantly on NEC2. The real improvements have been on the user interface, and 3D plotting capacity. I've found that 4nec2x beats all the other available modeling packages in this regard. If you've been daunted by antenna modeling till now, 4nec2 is a great way to start...and it's FREE, too!
I have a lot of years of NEC experience...anyone here interested in a few pointers, just give me a scream.
Eric
Mininec3, by the way, was written in BASIC, but borrowing most of its algorithms from the original Lawrence Livermore NEC2 (Numeric Electric Code). Mininec3 was the first antenna modeling program that didn't take a mainframe computer to run. (Golly...that was only 20 years ago...how times have changed!)
Since that time, a plethora of antenna modeling packages have shown up, most based on the original NEC2 code.....for good reason...nobody's been able to improve significantly on NEC2. The real improvements have been on the user interface, and 3D plotting capacity. I've found that 4nec2x beats all the other available modeling packages in this regard. If you've been daunted by antenna modeling till now, 4nec2 is a great way to start...and it's FREE, too!
I have a lot of years of NEC experience...anyone here interested in a few pointers, just give me a scream.
Eric