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I'm currently using my 64-core Linux desktop to run a genetic algorithm to optimize my design for an emergency #hamradio antenna. About an hour ago I submitted a patch to the (Haskell) codebase of the optimizer to allow it to support curved wires, which I needed because my design is made of four circular hoops. Despite being a fairly low activity project, the PR was merged within about 10 minutes, which felt awesome.

Am I cool yet? How many more layers of nerd do I have to add before I'm cool?

in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun

The cool kids verify their models after construction 😉

(Also, digging up that library out of curiosity, the PR's code reminds me of the smell of old library books, from when I learned ocaml in undergrad lo those decades ago.)

in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun

From here, it looks like you have re-invented the loop yagi. Build it and confirm that it performs as well as your model...then we can talk about coolness.
in reply to ve3hls

While researching, I've seen a few similar designs with several different names; "circular quad beam", "cylindrical quad", "E-Z-O" etc.

I'm very new at this so I don't have as much equipment as I'd like for testing this stuff. Just ordered a cheap field strength meter, so hopefully will be able to do better than the "can you hear me now?" test.

in reply to Ben Weinstein-Raun

Seriously interesting project. I've used the optimiser in 4NEC2 but it only has preset things you can choose to optimise. Being able to use a Python script as an objective function would be so much nicer 🙂

Anyway looking forward to hearing about what you end up with ...