A study of KC-135 aircraft antenna patterns

Abstract

Numerical solutions for the radiation patterns of aircraft antennas provide an excellent means of designing and locating antennas in order to achieve the desired performance. The high frequency solutions presented in this paper are based on fuselage antennas mounted on a general-type aircraft but applied specifically to the KC-135 aircraft. The roll and elevation plane patterns are computed for a monopole, axial slot, and circumferential slot mounted both over and forward of the wings. In each case the calculated patterns compare very favorably with the measured patterns. The precision pattern measurements were taken on a <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">\frac{1}{25}</tex> scale model of the KC-135 aircraft at NASA (Hampton, Va.) with special emphasis on reducing the mount and background effects.