Measurement of the radiation patterns of full-scale HF and VHF antennas

A system has been developed to measure the directivity patterns of full-scale antennas when located in their operational environments. The primary component of this system is an aircraft-towed multifrequency transmitter that is designed to approximate an elementary dipole antenna. An HF and a VHF version of this transmitter provide frequency coverage from 2 to 100 MHz. Techniques have been developed to measure the entire radiation pattern, from the horizon to the zenith, for several antennas simultaneously. Data derived from this system are processed to provide the radiation patterns as contour plots of the measured signal strength on azimuthal equal-area projections. The measurement hardware, data acquisition, and data processing techniques are described, and examples are given of measured and processed data derived from the system.