This shows the full 3-D radiation pattern of a half-wave horizontal dipole antenna — a complete, rotatable shape rather than a single flat slice, so you can see how the pattern's gain varies in every direction at once, not just along one elevation cut. The pattern is a live, animated mesh: several translucent wavefront shells continuously bloom outward from the antenna, shaped directly by the real gain math, so the lobes and nulls you see are literally being traced out by the traveling wave rather than pre-drawn.
Sky blue marks weaker directions, fading up through orange at the strongest directions — a continuous gradient rather than a hard on/off boundary, so you can read relative signal strength anywhere on the shape, not just at the peak.
The small tick mark and pulsing white sphere near the center represent the antenna schematically — they are not drawn to true scale. A far-field radiation pattern is a mathematical limit at infinite distance, so there's no physically correct near-source geometry to anchor it to; the marker is there purely to orient you, not to show real antenna height or size relative to the pattern.
Click Freeze to stop the animation and switch to a static, fully-extended version of the pattern. While frozen, click and drag (or touch and drag) anywhere on the view to orbit the camera freely and inspect the shape from any angle — this is the best way to see how a lobe you're looking at from one side connects around to the rest of the pattern.
Height above ground is the dipole's physical height, in wavelengths, and it's the single biggest factor shaping the pattern: low heights (around 1/8 to 1/4 λ) concentrate energy at steep upward angles for regional, near-vertical skywave contacts; heights approaching a full wavelength push the main lobe down toward the horizon for longer-distance skip, at the cost of splitting off additional higher-angle lobes. Slide all the way to Free space, past 3λ, and the ground disappears entirely — with no reflection left to interfere with the direct wave, the pattern collapses to the antenna's true, unmodified shape: a donut, full and round when viewed from the side or above, pinching to zero gain only along the wire's own axis. Every bit of lobing you see at any other height setting is a product of the ground reflection alone.
Frequency sets the operating frequency (and therefore the wavelength) and the animation's oscillation rate. Amplitude is a pure visual scale for the mesh — it does not change the pattern's shape, only how large it renders. Azimuth and Elevation angle set the camera's viewing direction directly (equivalent to dragging, but precise), and Zoom adjusts viewing distance without changing the pattern itself.