Art Wrote:
"You still haven`t explained why you accepted that there was high
impedance at the top preventing current flow."

Readers of this thread already know that there is a class of materials
known as insulators and that free-space and the earth`s atmosphere
belong to that class even though they are mostly immaterial.

If you would read the pages I suggested from R.W.P. King`s writing in
his section on Antennas in "Transmission Lines, Antennas, and Wave
Guides, you will find: 1. Electric Charges and Currents and the
Electromagnetic Field, 2. The General Law of Electromagnetic Action, 3.
Special Case of the Near Zone, 4. Special Case of the Far Zone, 5. Far
Zone, 6. Closed and Open Circuits, 7. Properties of an a
Antenna, 8. Leading Term in the Distribution of Current and Charge along
a Center-driven Highly Conducting Antenna of Extremely Small Radius, 9.
Distribution of Current along a Symmetrical Antenna of Small Radius, 10.
Input Self-Impedance of Symmetrical Center-drive. Antenna of Small
Radius.

Those numbered items are just the titles of the sections which are
filled with text and illistrations which clarify the issues discussed in
this thread. I`ll leave it to the reader to search out the wealth of
information contained therein.

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI