In article . net, "Peter
O. Brackett" wrote:

Most of us RRAA'ers seem to accept the physical reality inherent in the
assertions of James Clerk Maxwell's (Actually Oliver Heavisides!) elegant
and widely celebrated simple set of four partial differential equations and
their auxilliary relations.

Hello, and "assertions" as you put have been verified time and again
through experiment. It was Maxwell, not Heaviside, that quantified the
relationship of electric and magnetic fields in his 1873 treatise on
electricity and magnetism. In doing so, Maxwell tied together the
experimental results of Coulomb, Volta, Oersted, Ampere, Faraday, Henry
and Gauss. The four Maxwell equations, the Lorentz force law and 3
subsidiary relations (characterizing the medium) constitute the basic laws
of electromagnetic theory.

Many of your questions and statements are not supported by EM theory and
by extension, would not be verifiable via experiment. As I implied in an
earlier thread, you don't have to understand vector calculus and Maxwell's
equations to enjoy ham radio. However, just because one can use the ARRL
handbooks to get up on the air does confer the required information to
design say, an arbitrary antenna with specified electrical
characteristics. This is why we have engineers who, like it or not, move
modern society forward and provide us with those technologies that most of
us daily take for granted.

If you really want a more in-depth understanding (beyond the
technical/hobby level), and are not an EE by profession, I would suggest
auditing an undergrad EE course on the subject. Be advised though, if you
are weak in applied mathematics (primarily calculus) you may be in for a
bumpy ride. Sincerely, and 73s from N4GGO,

John Wood (Code 5550) e-mail:
Naval Research Laboratory
4555 Overlook Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20375-5337