John Popelish wrote:
I don't think so. Your claim is that one can use a resonant condition
to find the current delay at that frequency, and then, assume that that
delay holds for all other, lower frequencies.

At other *HF* frequencies and within reason, John, within reason.
A two to one range wouldn't surprise me. Tom's five to one range
from 16 MHz to 4 MHz is surprising. If the frequency kept going
to 1 MHz, would the delay go below 3 nS? If Tom measured the delay
at the self-resonant frequency of 16 MHz, would he measure 16 nS?
If one plots the delay from 1 MHz to 16 MHz would there be any
nonlinear points on the curve as implied by Tom's measurements?

I am skeptical that this
is the case for any device that is not inherently a constant delay
device.

I didn't mean to imply that it was an absolutely constant
delay device. If it is well designed and if the environment
is held constant, it should exhibit approximately the same
delay over HF below its self-resonant frequency. Tom's
measurements implied a 5 to 1 range shift in delay from a
4 to 1 range shift in frequency. Delays changing faster than
the frequency certainly don't make sense to me. What would
be the cause?

From 16 Mhz to 4 Mhz:
Does L vary much with frequency? Why?
Does C vary much with frequency? Why?
Does R vary much with frequency? Why?
Does G vary much with frequency? Why?
These are the parameters in the "phase constant" equation.

Let's take a look at my measured data where I changed the
stinger by 2 feet from zero to 12 feet. The 75m bugcatcher
coil is mounted on a mobile antenna mount on my GMC pickup.
For clearence purposes, it has a one foot bottom section.

The stinger goes from 0' to 12': 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12
The resonant frequency goes from: 6.7, 5.1, 4.3, 3.8, 3.5, 3.2, 3.0 MHz
I just don't see any nonlinear changes such as Tom reported.
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp