I'm a tad confused about this "reflected power" thing.

I've heard some statements that reflected power is something like
shining a light at a mirror.

But if the power is truly reflected, would not this be an easily
quantifiable thing?

Let's say a signal goes down a wire, "sees a mismatch" and is reflected
from the end. IIRC, light travels around a foot in a nanosecond. So if
you have an 80 meter dipole, and send out a mismatched signal, should
not you get the reflection back to the source in a quantifiable time?
That the signal isn't going quite that fast is only a measurement help.
The reflected signal would be delayed significantly, no?

I can easily visualize the idea that an antenna needs to be matched to
a transmitter, either through the antenna's natural impedance, or
through a network that makes it look like it is. Deviations on either
side of the impedance will cause problems, just as they will with other
systems that are expecting a particular load and getting something
different. But the idea of signals being actually reflected seems hard
to swallow.

I'm a real dilettante in these matters, but why would a signal be
reflected if the impedance was incorrect, and not if it was correct?


Possibly I'm saying some pretty stupid things here.

- Mike KB3EIA -