Richard Harrison wrote:
I can imagine a wave launched at one of an inductor sweeping across its
length and ignoring the round and round path of the wire, but I don`t
know of any of the old authors in my collection who say that such a
short-cut happens. Conductors are the source of free electrons which
permit current flow and my experience is that electricity goes where it
is wired.

Consider a tank circuit link coupled to the outside world.
There are probably negligible free electrons flowing from
primary to secondary. Yet efficient energy transfer occurs
when the coils are tightly coupled.

In a loading coil, each turn is tightly coupled to the
adjacent turn causing part of the current to be the result
of the fields rather than wire path. That's why the VF of
the loading coil is roughly double what it would be for
"round and round the coil" calculations. The VF for a 75m
bugcatcher coil appears to be in the ballpark of 0.04 which
is a far cry from the straight across 1.0 or even 0.5
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp