On Wed, 5 May 2004 21:49:41 -0500, (Richard
Harrison) wrote:

Gene, W4SZ wrote:
"---I was commenting on your assertion that the horizontal polarization
is "shorted out" at a conductive surfacce."

Richard Clark`s description may be indelicate but as I recall, Terman
says rouighly the same in several instances. Wish I had a copy at hand.
Terman says that a horizontally polarized low-angle wave suffers a phase
reversal upon reflection and as the difference in path length is
negligible between incident and reflected waves at low angles, the waves
being of opposite phase add to zero.

Indelicate or blunt, the results are the same. The Lambertian
distribution of a characteristic that is painfully 30 dB down due to
the presence of a perfect conductor plainly evidences severe loss. It
can't be the ohmic loss of conduction as this would negate the premise
of a perfect conductor, it can't be the dissipation factor of an
insulator for the same reason.

The electric dipole moment is clearly bridged by a conductor, by
definition. As such, at the interface, it must collapse completely
into a current which gives rise to counter emf, the two waves cancel
as a function of phase - the proof again is found in the Lambertian
distribution that vanishes completely with the removal of ground (why
horizontal antennas are held up in the air). The more remote the
ground, the greater the variation of phase and the distribution, and
yet the low angles never fully recover (the death embrace of ground is
always there).

The ONLY deficit the vertical sees is in the characteristic Z of the
interface presenting a Brewster Angle that allows unfettered passage
of power through the interface and traps it. Again, it is the ratio
of the characteristic Zs that account for this. If you could contrive
to find an earth characteristic of 4000 Ohms instead of Salt Water's
40, then you would observe the EXACT SAME characteristics of
propagation. The poorest earth almost looks like the Z of the æther.
This means that the power impinging upon it is trapped (because ray
tracing would reveal it trying to penetrate the earth to re-emerge in
the antipodes). Hence the conduction explanation is a contrivance
that fits only through the imposition of a limited experience.

Replace the perfect conductor of an imaginary world with that of a
realistic earth and the Horizontal's low angle response still sucks to
the tune of 30dB down (for the terminally anal, perhaps closer to
-26dB). This says Horizontals suffer for the same reason irrespective
of earth conductivity (unless perhaps you are on a mile high mountain
of glass ). In some sense, this suggests that at least you don't have
to worry about it too much because there is nothing you can do about
it (although I have disproved this too).

On the other hand, for verticals, the variation of earth
characteristics gives rise to a wide variation in low angle response.
And for some earth characteristics, the vertical is clearly the winner
by an order of magnitude (dare I say in excess of one S-Unit?).

Is this boon conduction borne? If Salt water with a pathetic
conductivity orders of magnitude beneath nichrome wire is superb, then
by the facile logic of conductivity, we should see remarkable
performance boosts for a plain of silver. No, the conductivity
argument is simply the tales we tell frightened children who awake
from DX nightmares. ;-)

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC