Richard Fry wrote:
"K7ITM" wrote
Assuming the two "waves" existed independently at some points
in space, you'll have to first tell us _exactly_ what was done to
combine them into one wave.
__________

The physics of EM radiation.

As an example, consider an array comprised of two, identical radiators
on the same vertical axis, in the same physical orientation, with a
vertical separation of 1 wavelength, each driven with equal r-f power
and relative phase by the same r-f source.

The fields from the two radiators are generated and radiated separately,
but once well past the near-field boundary of the array, the EM field
existing at every point in free space will be the vector sum of those
separate fields.

When the net field at the radiation peak of the array is measured in the
far field, there will be no way to determine from that measurement
whether the field was generated using a single radiator with X power
input, or the described 2-element array having about 1/2 that power input.

RF

So in the limit, as the number of radiators is increased to infinity,
the amount of power it would take to produce the measured sum would
go to zero. Nice logic.
73,
Tom Donaly, KA6RUH