This sounds like a great project....and a super idea!
Please post a link to this when you're done....I'd love to see this!
I’ll be adding it to the website once I get
enough of it done to be useful.
I keep finding interesting “little” projects that
continue growing once I start on them. It
turns out that the plots can get rather messy,
with irregular shapes. I’m in the process of
trying to automate as much of the data
collection process as possible, but it is still
slow. And I have a lot of different models
I’d like to do, although I expect I’ll publish
it with a small number of patterns and add
to it as there is interest and/or I have time.
BTW, I'm sure you're aware of L.B. Cebik's initial work on this...
Yes, I am linking to his various articles.
While I have great respect for his work, we do
come to different conclusions on occasion. Not
because we use different models, but because
we have different operating assumptions.
For example, he makes a big deal of having a
nearly circular radiation pattern, but that
isn’t necessarily optimum to cover a long,
skinny state (like Tennessee, for example).
And while he focused on squeezing every
possible fraction of a dB out of an antenna,
I tend to emphasize having an
adequatesignal. When conditions are poor, being able
to switch to a better band gives far better
results than trying to increase gain to
get through when the ionosphere isn’t
cooperating. So, for example, up here I’d add
an antenna for 160m before trying to
increase gain on 80m (unless I was using
a really poor antenna - there are several
on the market).
That’s not to say that either of us is “right”
or “wrong”, just to understand the context
and underlying assumptions of the author
when reading articles, to see how well they
apply to our own circumstances.
...there are antennas that can give you about as much gain over the typical inverted-v, as you get from a KW amp!
So far, for 75m antennas at ~30’ without a
ground screen, over somewhat poor soil
(typical of much of Oregon) none of my
models have shown more than about
6 dB over a half wave dipole in the same
conditions. Of course, the results will vary
depending on the specific antennas chosen,
(But I guess some of the older “1 kW” amps
we’re rated by DC input, rather than PEP
output, so they might not be that far off...)
And again, that comes down to personal
operating preferences and trade-offs.
So the important message is that
personal preferences and operating style
play an important part in determining
what antennas are preferred for each
operator.