mcp-nec2-antenna

Design and simulate wire antennas with the NEC2 method-of-moments solver, driven over MCP. Gain patterns, impedance, VSWR, radiation lobes — from your terminal or AI agent.

Quick start · Tools · Workflows · Documentation

What is mcp-nec2-antenna?

mcp-nec2-antenna is an MCP server that wraps NEC2 (Numerical Electromagnetics Code, version 2) — the classic method-of-moments wire-antenna solver — so an LLM agent can design, sweep, and analyze HF / VHF / UHF antennas through plain-English tool calls.

Drive it from any MCP client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Codex CLI) or call the NEC2C binary directly via the same card-deck export. Five parameterized antenna geometries (dipole, Yagi-Uda, ground-plane vertical, full-wave loop, inverted-V) compile to NEC2 GW/EX/FR/RP cards, solve with the nec2c reference engine, and return impedance, VSWR, gain, and front-to-back from a single tool call.

What mcp-nec2-antenna does well:

• 🤖 AI-native via MCP. First-class Model Context Protocol server with 9 tools. Any Claude / LLM agent can drive it.

• 📡 Reference engine. Uses the canonical NEC2C C implementation — the same solver behind 4nec2, xnec2c, and antenna textbooks.

• ⚡ Parameterized geometries. Five built-in wire antennas with closed-form initial sizing; the agent fills in band + height + element count and gets a ready-to-solve deck.

• 📐 Three ground models. free-space, perfect ground, real (Sommerfeld) ground — picked per geometry.

• 🔒 AGPL-3.0-or-later. Modifications shared back if served over a network.

Quick start

Install

NEC2C must be on PATH first:

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install nec2c

# macOS
brew install nec2c

# Arch Linux
yay -S nec2c

Then:

git clone https://github.com/RFingAdam/mcp-nec2-antenna.git
cd mcp-nec2-antenna
uv pip install -e .

Wire it into your MCP client

Claude Code:

claude mcp add nec2-antenna -- uv run --directory /path/to/mcp-nec2-antenna mcp-nec2-antenna

Codex CLI:

codex mcp add nec2-antenna -- uv run --directory /path/to/mcp-nec2-antenna mcp-nec2-antenna

Raw config (Claude Desktop):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nec2-antenna": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "--directory", "/path/to/mcp-nec2-antenna", "mcp-nec2-antenna"]
    }
  }
}

Then ask your assistant in plain English:

"Design a 5-element Yagi for 435 MHz at 10 m height, simulate it, and tell me the gain and front-to-back."

The agent calls nec2_create_yagi followed by nec2_simulate, and reports impedance, VSWR, and radiation pattern.

Tools

Full tool reference in docs/tools.md.

What it solves

Ground models: free-space, perfect (PEC), and real (Sommerfeld two-medium). Pattern step is configurable; default is 5° azimuth/elevation.

Workflows

mcp-nec2-antenna fits in the following eng-mcp-suite workflow bundles:

• rf-design — closed-form trans-line synthesis (lineforge) + wire-antenna MoM (this server) + circuit/filter sim (mcp-ltspice-qucs).

• antenna-bench — antenna design + EMC limit lookup (mcp-emc-regulations) before lab measurement.

See the suite manifest for the full list of sibling MCPs and bundle definitions.

Documentation

• 📘 Quick Start — install through first call.

• 🛠️ Tool reference — every MCP tool, every argument.

• 📐 Usage examples — practical end-to-end walkthroughs.

• 🏗️ Architecture — how this MCP fits in eng-mcp-suite.

Part of eng-mcp-suite

This MCP server is part of

An open umbrella for engineering MCP servers across RF, EMC, PCB, signal integrity, EM simulation, and lab test. Same brand, same docs structure, designed to compose. See the full catalog or jump to a sibling:

Contributing

Contributions are welcome.

1. Pick a GitHub issue.

2. Fork + branch (feature/your-thing or fix/your-bug).

3. Run the local check suite:

   uv run pytest

4. Open a PR — link the issue, request review.

License

AGPL-3.0-or-later. Relicensed from Apache-2.0 in v0.2.0 to align with the eng-mcp-suite toolkit-wide AGPL move. The underlying NEC2 engine is public-domain US-government code; this wrapper is AGPL-3.0-or-later and is independent of NEC2's public-domain status.

Acknowledgments

• Gerald J. Burke (LLNL) — original NEC2 Fortran (1981, public domain).

• Neoklis Kyriazis (5B4AZ) — NEC2C C port, the reference engine this server invokes.

• The MCP working group — for the Model Context Protocol specification.

Part of eng-mcp-suite — built for ham radio operators, RF engineers, and AI agents.