On Thursday, February 13, 2014 4:44:04 AM UTC-6, gareth wrote:
I was interested in a
discussion of how it actually works at the physics level?

The capacitance to ground concept is necessary if the lumped circuit model is being used. When one starts talking about phase shifts, one needs to change over to the distributed network (wave reflection) model. An HF mobile antenna is usually 90 degrees long electrically. The following paper indicates that if phase is important, the distributed network model should be used for anything electrically longer than 15 degrees.

http://hamwaves.com/antennas/inductance/corum.pdf

Capacitance to ground and a phase shift due to reflections from the end of a top hat are incompatible concepts from two different math models. The distributed network model is closer to Maxwell's equations than is the lumped circuit model.