Frank, all that any good current book on antenna design will do is refer you back to the same propagation realities that are used by HFTA and other modeling software. HFTA produces nomograms that sho
K6UJ: for a 15 meter yagi for 6000 miles. Your question depends on many variables. There are two programs that you can use to help answer your question yourself: 1. What angle is optimum? Depends on
No ... HFTA does NOT require even a basic understanding of physics to be used and to be useful. I never said anything about any need to have an "exceptional understanding" of anything to use the appl
Thanks for the explanation, Pete. I guess I did not fully understand what HFTA was all about. Now that I do, I am not convinced it is entirely useful, at least not to me since I don't have the resour
David, I have found that HFTA (with Microdem) works as advertised. The program accurately predicted how my antenna installation would work by antenna height band, by DX destination and azimuth based
Frank, You may not have the resources to raise or lower the antennas, but tools like HFTA are very useful for assessing trade-offs and making cost/benefit choices. Take a look at the chart in Section
Right on. So many questions that are asked here, and asked again, and again, are answered by simply studying the fundamentals, often in an ARRL publication. In this case, it's the ARRL Antenna Book.
Absolutely. I'm a member of a serious contesting club, and many of our members, including me, have used HFTA extensively to decide where to put our antennas. Those who have done so find excellent cor
I will second that. I have 24 acres here and am in the process of finishing off construction of a big contest station with three rotating towers. Where I placed those towers and which bands were repr
sometimes it might be more important to avoid a null falling YES.. Especially since the angle of arrival statistics don't say anything about the strength of the signals. Just because you have a high
And after reading, use the program, get some odd seeming results, then go back and read again, etc. Effectively using any modeling code benefits from using it. They ALL have idiosyncracies. _________
Hi Frank You might be thinking a bit too linearly. I have a feeling that modeling becomes MORE important the LESS you have to spend. Your 1/2 wave example might be the perfect launching point. It's a
And you can do it in little chunks, when the weather outside is frightful, or when you're sitting on a long plane flight, or stuck in a hotel room. And it lets you answer some interesting questions y
You can work DX with almost any antenna. N6BT worked all continents in two days running 120 watts to a light bulb. Some people enjoy building their station and maximizing their signal. K6UJ asked wha