[TowerTalk] Particle Swarm Optimization in ham products?

[Dan Maguire]

Hi Rudy,

Not PSO, but you may wish to check out AutoEZ which is an Excel app that drives EZNEC.  Its optimizer uses the Nelder-Mead simplex algorithm.  One of the models used during beta testing was a 5-6 element, 5 band quad with 108 wires and 1236 segments.  I'm guessing that might be well beyond the size of your 20m wire Yagi.

You can find a complete description of the AutoEZ optimizer here:

http://ac6la.com/aeoptimize.html

If you'd care to contact me off-list and provide a model file I'd be happy to do some sample runs for you.  AutoEZ can read the model file that you might have been using with 4nec2.  Any SY (symbol) cards will be automatically converted to AutoEZ variables.  Or, if you have an EZNEC (.ez) format model we can easily "variable-ize" that to use with the optimizer.

The AutoEZ home page is:

http://ac6la.com/autoez.html

Note that AutoEZ requires both EZNEC and Microsoft Excel.  It cannot be run under Open Office, Office Libre, or Kingsoft Office.  None of those programs fully support the 27000 lines of Visual Basic code contained in the package.

As for PSO, I believe Justin Johnson, G0KSC, of InnoVAntennas uses a custom PSO package for his designs.  You could check with him for details as to general availability.

Dan, AC6LA
http://ac6la.com