purchased and used by amateurs who have very little technical background in electrical fundamentals, let alone electromagnetics or antenna design. It’s also used by the U.S. and foreign military services, aerospace companies, defense contractors, international broadcasters, universities, and so forth. Add to that the EZNEC pro users, and you have an idea of the enormous range of background knowledge represented by the readers of this manual.
So please, for those of you who are more knowledgeable, don’t be insulted if some concepts are explained more simply than you’re accustomed to. And for those with less experience, don’t think for a minute that an effort is being made to snow you. The sole objective here is to communicate, and give you the information you need to get the most from EZNEC, whichever program type you’re using.
The only relevant question is whether you get from this manual the information you need. If I fail to communicate, the fault is mine, and I’d like very much to hear where I failed. With today’s tools it’s not difficult to modify the manual, and your input will help improve it and make it more useful to others. So please let me know when you run across problems with the manual. I apologize in advance for not always being able to respond personally and promptly. But your comments will be read, and they will be acted upon. Please send your comments to w7el@eznec.com
I’m sometimes asked if there are any restrictions on professional use of the standard program. No, there are none at all, and in fact it’s widely used for a wide variety of professional purposes. The distinction between program types is only in price and features, not in how they’re used. The other side of that coin is that people wanting to use the professional version for strictly amateur purposes pay the same price for the professional version as everyone else. The only use restriction on any program is that only one person can use the program at one time unless corresponding additional copies are purchased.
Like many, many EZNEC and EZNEC pro users, I also wear two hats, so welcome to both amateur and professional customers. I’m one of you both.
73,
Roy Lewallen, P.E., W7EL
Notes For International Users
It is my intent to make EZNEC work correctly on computers set for the standards of other countries. This means that if a comma (,) is set as the decimal separator by the Windows Control Panel Regional Settings, all numbers should be displayed with that convention, and all numerical inputs are designed to accept that convention. (The decimal separator is automatically chosen according to your language preference. However, it can be changed to another character via the Regional Settings if desired.) You must use this separator when entering numbers into EZNEC. (There are a few exceptions to this, detailed below.) Dates should be displayed according to your standard. All outputs should print correctly on A4 as well as U.S. sized paper, and the program should otherwise operate normally in all respects. If you encounter any operation, at any time, which requires you to enter or view data in a format other than the standard convention for your country, please let me know. Of course, all details you provide will be helpful.
Exceptions
EZNEC is unable to correctly format numbers when run on some operating systems if the both the decimal and thousands separators are set to characters which aren’t standard for the region of operation. If the setting causes a problem, EZNEC will detect it and show an error message when the program starts.
A period (.) is used as the decimal separator in all comma-delimited output files such as Lastz.txt. Comma-delimited output files are intended to be used for importing data into spreadsheets and other such programs. In this format, fields are separated with commas, so the period must be used for decimals.
EZNEC pro only: NEC-format files read and written by EZNEC-M and EZNEC/4 use the U.S. standard, because I believe that most compiled versions of NEC-2 and NEC-4 expect and produce files using this convention. Please let me know if you have any information to the contrary, or if you see any indication that EZNEC is not producing or interpreting these files with U.S. conventions.
Thousands separators are not used in EZNEC. However, certain settings of this option can cause a problem. See the first paragraph in the Exceptions section