[TowerTalk] Terrain Modeling (was choke on vertical dipole)

[Wes Stewart]

 Speaking primarily as a ham radio DXer, constrained by county zoning limits, my take on terrain modeling is, "What am I going to do about it?"  Propagation prediction is pretty much the same question.
Wes  N7WS
    On Thursday, January 15, 2026 at 11:59:14 AM MST, Jim Lux <jim at luxfamily.com> wrote: 

Yep - FEKO is one of several.  Unless your hobby/job is modeling, though, I believe most folks would come to the same conclusion.
 
(and still free, although I think it's a web based version now https://web.altair.com/academic-hub-feko)

We developed some specialized codes at JPL to look at propagation of 3 GHz signals through disaster rubble.  My practical experience is that the generalized tools - you spend a lot of time building the model and figuring out what's important and what's not (e.g. taking a mechanical CAD model and turning it into triangles) - You can make a specialized tool more quickly, but it's very narrowly focused.  You always have to step back and figure out whether the juice is worth the squeeze.

Here's a couple papers on Vaughn Cable's FDTD model of rubble   (Vaughn is K6ZTA)

https://dataverse.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=hdl:2014/44201

https://dataverse.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=hdl:2014/44170



On Thu, 15 Jan 2026 11:36:31 -0700, David Gilbert <ab7echo at gmail.com> wrote:

FEKO is supposedly a much more sophisticated modeling application
capable of handling complex terrain and even 3D objects like cars (or
tanks, for which I assume it was originally designed) and at one point
it offered a free download for students and experimenters if you
registered with them.  I downloaded it and tried to use it, but
eventually decided that the effort it would take to learn it greatly
exceeded the practical benefit I would get from it.

Dave  AB7E


 



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