| WinCAP Wizard - Enhanced VOACAP Toolset |
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External Antennas The VOACAP package installs with an application named HFAnt. The purpose of HFAnt is to create, modify and save antenna data files to be used by the ITS HF Propagation prediction models; this of course includes VOACAP. HFAnt is reasonably easy to use and is ideal for making the antennas used for predictions more closely match those used by a particular station. Antennas modeled with other software may also be used. However this is slightly more complicated. An ITS-HF Type 14 is an antenna file used for point-to-point predictions in ICEPAC and VOACAP. It is a "Gain table versus Elevation angle & Frequency" file. To my knowledge there are several alternatives. The easiest way to create such a file is probably using the software included with the 19th Edition of “The ARRL Antenna Book”. Included is the N6BV software, YT (Yagi Terrain analysis) and a companion program called MAKEVOA.EXE. The latter program takes the far-field elevation pattern from a terrain analysis using YT and creates a VOACAP type 14-antenna file. In addition, the "NEC-Win Plus+" reportedly exports to directly to the necessary format. The application "4nec2" developed by Arie Voors also creates ITS-HF Type 14: http://www.si-list.org/swindex2.html More antenna information for use with VOACAP may be found here: |