Cecil Moore wrote:
Brian Kelly wrote:
Heh. Somewhere along the line a long time ago some sage somewhere
stated that there are only two basic types of antennas, point radiators
which are really difficult to build and dipoles and their variants. The
concept stuck and I've been wearing it ever since.

There's got to be a history of the word dipole still in
existence. If you look at the Wikipedia definition of
"dipole", it refers to the equal and opposite charges
existing at two points, akin to the equal and opposite
charges existing at a point in time at the two ends of
a 1/2WL piece of wire. Your 1/2WL continuous piece of
conductor has two electromagnetic poles somewhat akin
to the earth having two magnetic poles. I suspect it was
ignorant hams who changed the meaning to two conductive
fishin' poles pointed in opposite directions and fed in
the middle. :-)

Indeed. We purloined the term then perverted it. Dipoles are
everywhere, water molecules, proteins, theyt're all over plasna phyics,
as you point out Mother Earth is a dipole, election campaigns . .
sigh.

73, Cecil http://www.w5dxp.com

Brian w3rv