Quote Originally Posted by Manicdan View Post
i remember an article about a computer farm a guy used to make patents, one was for antennas, since its actually really complex mixing signal types and trying to optimize for both. so it was one of those programs which creates offspring that are slightly different and tests them out and keeps the good one (programmed evolution). the antenna he built was used for some space ship or satellite. pretty cool stuff
I believe what you are trying to say is a genetic algorithm. And I don't know why you guys are making fun of antenna engineers, they are very complicated and extremely valuable systems. Companies like northrop grumman and lockheed martin make billions on their radar divisions. Do some reading on AESA radar, synthetic aperture radar, phased array radars, etc. and tell me the people who design those systems don't have degrees.

On topic, of course the engineers knew this was going to happen. I can only assume that marketing or someone deemed that it would be too expensive or not pretty enough to put an insulating coating on the antenna.