Don Gillies wrote:
In all the antenna books I have read there are copious diagrams of voltage
distributions along the various types of antenna, but as far as I can see,
none of them has explained where the two points are that the voltage is
being measured between. Can anyone enlighten me on this please?

DG

I'm curious what antenna books those might be. I've seen plenty of
books that show current distributions on conductors in an antenna, and
plenty that show electric and magnetic field strengths, but darned few
that show "voltage distributions along..." antennas.

It makes plenty of sense to talk about electric field strengths, and if
you know them, you can calculate the potential between any two points
you wish _when_measured_along_a_particular_path_. But the potential
("voltage") between two points in general depends on the path along
which you measure it. In particular, if you're in the presence of a
time-varying magnetic field (which would be the case around an
antenna), the potential depends strongly on the path you take.

Cheers,
Tom