Rest easy, Walt. To my knowledge, no one has ever shown BL&E's
*measurements* to be invalid, or the conclusions reached from those
measurements. It's their mathematical treatment of what they expected to
happen, in the first part of their paper (Part II: Theoretical
Considerations), that wasn't correct. I don't believe I have a paper
that details the errors they made, but it was regarded my later authors
as being in error, prompting a great deal of more rigorous work. Later
authors don't generally even reference that BL&E theoretical
mathematical work. Nearly all reference their measurements, however, as
they should.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Walter Maxwell wrote:

Roy, I don't have the Wait and Pope paper for review, but I'm
concerned over the validity of their equations that you say render
BL&E's measurements invalid. How can their measurements be invalid
when field-strength measurements of literally thousands of AM BC
antennas agree with BL&E's? Keep in mind that every BC station that
uses a directional array is required to prove the performance of the
array with field strength measurements that assure the measured values
agree with the calculated values.

It was only after verifying BL&E's measurements by comparing their
data with those obtained from many subsequent measurements of BC
antennas that the FCC used the BL&E data in standardizing the
requirements for radial systems for new BC stations.

Isn't it possible that Wait and Pope's equations relate to some other
aspects of BC antennas than those of BL&E? I simply cannot accept the
notion that BL&E's data is wrong.

Walt,W2DU