On a particular class of minihypers and its applications II.: Improvements for q square

A particular class of minihypers was studied previously by the authors (in press, Des. Codes Cryptogr.). For q square, this paper improves the results of that work, under the assumption that no weights occur in the minihyper. Using the link between these minihypers and maximal partial s-spreads of PG(N, q), (s + 1) \ (N + 1), the findings on minihypers translate immediately into results on the extenclability of partial s-spreads with small positive deficiency. Other applications of this characterisation of minihypers are given by P. Govaerts et al. (in press, European J. Combin.). (C) 2001 Elsevier Science.