Dave wrote:
I wish to know if the reactance of a dipole that is physically 0.5000
wavelengths in length depends on the diameter of the wire or not.

Yes, it does.
. . .

There is a formula in Balanis' book for reactance of a dipole of
arbitrary radius and length, in terms of sine and cosine integrals. It's
hard to write out, but the best I can do gives:

Define:

eta=120 Pi
k=2/lambda

reactance = (eta/(4*Pi)) (2 SinIntegral[k l] +
Cos[k l]*(2 SinIntegral[k l] - SinIntegral[2 k l]) -
Sin[k l]*(2 CosIntegral[k l] - CosIntegral[2 k l] -
CosIntegral[(2 k a^2)/l]));

where 'a' is the radius.


. . .

This is the formulation by S.A. Schelkunoff, which is one of many
approximations to the general problem of finding the reactance of a
simple cylindrical dipole of arbitrary length and diameter. The general
problem was attacked for decades by some very skilled mathematicians and
engineers including R.W.P. King, David Middleton, Charles Harrison, G.H.
Brown, D. D. King, F. G. Blake, M.C. Gray, and others. You'll find their
works scattered about the IRE (now IEEE), British IEE, and various
physics journals. The problem can't be solved in closed form, so all
these people proposed various approximations, some of which work better
in some situations and others in others. A good overview can be found in
"The Thin Cylindrical Antenna: A Comparison of Theories, by David
Middleton and Rolond King, in _J. of Applied Physics_, Vol. 17, April 1946.

. . .

Does anyone have any comments? Any idea if Balanis's work is more
accurate? It is more up to date, but perhaps its an approximation and
the amateur radio book is more accurate. (The ham book seems quite well
researched, and is not full of the voodoo that appears in a lot of ham
books).

As I mentioned above, some approximations are better in some
circumstances (e.g., dipoles of moderate diameter near a half wave in
length) and some in others (e.g. fat dipoles or ones near multiples of a
half wave in length). I don't know which is better for your particular
question. The easy way to find out is to get one of the readily
available antenna modeling programs, any of which is capable of
calculating the answer to very high accuracy, and compare this correct
answer with the various approximations you find published.

BTW, I'm also looking for an exact formula for input resistance of a
dipole of arbitrary length. I know is 73.13 Ohms when 0.5 wavelengths
long, but I'm not sure exactly how much it varies when the length
changes (I believe it is not a lot).

There is no exact formula for that, either. Calculating an exact answer
requires knowledge of the current distribution, which is a function of
wire diameter. Assuming a sinusoidal distribution gets you very close
for thin dipoles, but it's not exact. You'll find calculations based on
this assumption in just about any antenna text such as Balanis or Kraus.
But again, you can get extremely accurate results from readily available
antenna modeling programs.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL