On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:43:05 -0700, "Joel Koltner"
wrote:

Does the radiation pattern change much?

Hi Joel,

Depends on your meaning of "much." Given the ad-hoc nature of your
goal (and the resolution of any S-Meter in those services): you
wouldn't be able to tell any difference at all.

Will it become
so lossy (radiation resistance rapidly heading towards zero) that this isn't
really a good idea in the first place? (I wouldn't be surprised if a patch
antenna actually doesn't radiate much at all outside of the antenna's own
resonances...) Or perhaps it's not possible to say, in general, what happens
and one needs to perform simulations on a case-by-case basis?

Loss will be largely dictated by match, and the matching components'
and the radiator's Ohmic loss.

I'm asking based on the thought that there are a lot of pretty nice,
off-the-shelf antennas out there that were designed to be resonant (using,
e.g., quarter-wave dimensions) at some pretty high frequency (2.4GHz being a
common one, of course), and I'm interested in how viable it is to use these
antenna for 2m/70cm amateur radio use.

Because they look cool? That will change fast when you add in the
matching accessories (and that doesn't mean fashion coordination).

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC