I don't remember if it was a private chat or in a public thread somewhere, but he posted everything including the radial length to the ring and the ring diameter. I would have to dig to find it...
Yes, multiple times with different versions of the antenna. You can't just make the ring bigger, you also have to adjust the length of the radial ring supports. The larger the ring the smaller the ring supports. When I did it before I had to make several small changed in succession to keep all the changes showing peak gain. I posted one of said models one that pushed the concept to its limit, but I think it was you (I could be mistaken) that then stated that it was not a Vector...
Aside from what the two of us have done when modeling various matching systems, such as both of our versions of the I-10k/Shockwave models, I haven't seen any models that includes any form of matching anywhere. I'm not sure why that is, perhaps people are happy with just the basic antenna layouts? I can't say that is good enough. I have noted, for example, that when I modeled a Maco V58, for example, when I include the matching system (or in that case my best attempt as that design is difficult for modeling to properly match) that the optimal antenna length that provides the most low angle gain is very close to the antenna's actual length. The model shows that extending the vertical element to a full 5/8 wavelength, the higher angle lobe has already become the dominant lobe at the cost of the lower angle lobe.
If others aren't even making the attempt, in my opinion that is their loss.
In most cases adding or removing a matching system does not effect gain that much. The antennas I've made with matching systems do tend to have slightly lower gain compared to their unmatched counterparts. This makes sense as antenna matching always adds some loss to the antenna. That being said, the losses so far are measured in 1/10'ths and 1/100's of a dB, so its not a major concern. The strange thing is, such matching systems sometimes seem to have more of an effect on the current distribution of an antenna than they do the antenna's gain, which is the primary reason I brought it up above when discussing adding radials to a Vector and seeing changes.
The DB
