John Popelish wrote:
Since, in both standing
waves and traveling waves, current at a point, changes magnitude and
sign in exactly the same way (at a point, they are indistinguishable),
they can both be described with phasor notation.

Limiting oneself to a point measurement is handicapping onself. When
the equation for standing wave current is compared to the equation
for traveling wave current, the real differences are obvious.

For standing waves, the phasor of a neighboring point has the same phase
shift, ...

Exactly! Therefore, it cannot be used to measure the phase shift
through a coil or even through a wire.

But at any point along both standing waves and traveling waves, there
certainly is a phasor that represents the current at that point.

For the standing wave current it is a phasor that doesn't rotate
all up and down the wire. You have to admit, that's a weird phasor.
It's more akin to DC than anything else.

You need to get past this misconception that standing waves are not
current and are not describable by phasors.

Standing waves current is the superposition of two essentially equal
currents traveling in opposite directions. If it was equal DC
currents traveling in opposite directions, what would the net current
be?
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp