On Apr 18, 5:40 am, Keith Dysart wrote:
,,,
Of course the
same holds for the ideal transmission lines and the terminators.
The lack of absolute perfection does not obviate the value
of the thought experiment for furthering understanding.

Actually, Keith, one of the beauties of your proposed experiment is
that the line connecting the generators does NOT have to be lossless.
It need only be uniform. The N-S section does not even have to be
exactly 1/2 wave long; it just needs to be tapped in the center. The
E-W section can be virtually any length, and it doesn't even have to
have the same impedance or loss characteristics as the N-S section.
The generators can be a far cry from perfect; they could just as well
be ideal voltage sources, or ideal current sources, or even ICOM
transmitters; they just need to be the same, and have some way to be
driven out-of-phase. Using line with loss results in the sources
having to deliver a small amount of power, of course, and having the N-
S section differ slightly from 1/2 wavelength just means that the
sources will see a slightly reactive load.

And of course, the value of your experiment is what goes on in the
lines, and has nothing to do with the sources driving them. It's a
beautifully simple experiment that can be produced easily on the
bench, or in a simulator (like the free LTSpice or even RFSim99).
Thanks for offering it, Keith.

Cheers,
Tom

Still waiting for someone to send me an ICOM 706 or whatever that was
so I can measure the source impedance seen at the output terminals
while it's delivering its nominally rated power to the recommended
load...