[TowerTalk] Loop vs Dipole...I'm original "asker"

[Steve Hunt]

I'm with Jerry.

I reckon Lord Kelvin got it right in 1883 when he said:

"In physical science the first essential step in the direction of 
learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and 
practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I 
often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and 
express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot 
measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of 
a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, 
but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of 
/Science/, whatever the matter may be."

So I place more trust  in my EZNEC results than in comments such as "I 
tried this antenna and it worked really well".

I find EZNEC allows me to get an understanding of how an antenna "ticks" 
that I couldn't easily get any other way. Of course its results wont be 
reliable if the real world differs from the model, but I've been really 
impressed with how well they hold up in the HexBeam work I've been 
doing. Take a look at the "Real world vs EZNEC" plots on my website:

http://www.karinya.net/g3txq/hexbeam/eznec2/

As Jerry says - results that are good enough for Ham use.

Steve G3TXQ

K4SAV wrote:
> NEC only provides an estimate of the results, but it is a very good 
> estimate.  It is not 100% accurate, but it is good enough for ham use, 
> and in many cases the accuracy exceeds the accuracy that you can measure 
> by experiment.
>
> Jerry, K4SAV
>