Hi Chris, your guess regarding the frequency response is right. It is essentially a simple way to specify the pattern across the frequency assuming the pattern doesn't change much across those frequencies. If the pattern change cannot be overlooked, then you may want to define the custom pattern across different frequencies as a 3D matrix.
The question of whether the pattern should be gain or field is a bit subtle. If you look at the equation of combining the element pattern to form the array pattern, it is essentially a field relation so the best thing to put in the pattern is actually the field pattern. This being said, if all elements in the array are the same and they point to the same direction, then it can be shown that under such assumptions, the gain relation is the same as the field relation and in that case you can simply use the gain pattern.
HTH
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