Wire mesh size with NEC-2?

When a wire net, as opposed to patchwork,* is being used with NEC-2 to
model a conducting surface, what is an appropriate mesh size? A person**
claiming to be experienced with MININEC and NEC-2 has told me that with a
mesh size of 0.05 lambda (to avoid misunderstanding: that's lambda/twenty)
or less, NEC-2 has numerical difficulty (because of near-degeneracy of its
current-modeling basis functions). Since a mesh size substantially greater
than lambda/20 might not approximate a "solid" conducting surface well
enough, he advised me to use MININEC or NEC-4 (or-5??) instead of NEC-2.
-Chuck, W1HIS
______________
*Patchwork may not be used to model a conducting body that's very thin, like
  a pancake or (in my application) a modest-diameter sheet-metal ground-plane.
  (Cf. the NEC-2 manuals.)
**name withheld to protect him if he's wrong; I didn't ask permission to
  quote him in public.
Received on Fri Aug 02 1996 - 17:15:00 EDT