Tom
I read as far as the word "tho a"
and you made my day, you confirmed what I suspected that all
antennas are based around yagis and not about antennas in general which
is exactly the point I made earlier.But your explanation tho correct
for a yagi is not all encompasing.
If you contend that your explanation over rules the mesh or field
aproach i.e a reflector must always be a longer radiator completely
avoids the essence of the first question i.e long versus shorter
reflectors. When aproached from a meshed
circuit point of view it can be seen that coupling of radiators behind
the dipole generator can easily produce an element(s) of a shorter
length.since as you stated a reflrctor does not reflect
but creates a reactive field in conjuction with other elements in
the immediate field to satisfy Newton's law
The rest of your reply I consider irrelavent to what was previously
stated and thus diversionary to the subject at hand.
If you read the initial post carefully you will note that his question
revolved around the length of reflector (s) which in essence calls for
a different aproach to the traditional format
based around a yagi .It is for this reason that such questions are
raised by those who apply deeper thought to the subject,
ask this question over and over again and cannot be explaned
unless coupling of individual fields are brought into play instead of
introducing personal rules similar to front to back ratios which
is a point ratio of energy efficiency rather than a overall array
energy efficiency. and so on.
Art