Your are right Roy & Cecil. I just confirmed using NEC and looked it up
in the ARRL hand book as well. I' happy to not be carrying around that
misconception any more. I'm just a little embarased having passed
myself off as some kind of expert.

I've spent a lot of time using NEC and have actually built a lot of the
antennas I've designed using it, with excellent results. It just goes
to show that successfully using CAD doesn't neccessarily impart wisdom.

I'm sure the larger conductor has less inductance but as Yuri
Blanarovich pointed out earlier the bigger conductor has more
capacitance to free space and that effect must dominate the effect
inductance reduction.