steveeh131047 wrote:

Roy, I've glanced at some of those references and it looks like
there's years of "catch-up" reading for me

It seems like the starting point for one of the earliest discussions
was whether or not there is a variation in current amplitude along the
length of a loading coil, with some pretty strong opinion saying that
there isn't. I don't want to go over old ground, but perhaps you can
give me a simple answer to this one question:

When I use EZNEC to model a 6ft whip above a loading coil (40T, 6"
diameter, 12" long), and look at the current distribution across the
coil at the resonant frequency of the antenna (3.79 MHz), I see 1A at
the base of the coil increasing to 1.07A at the centre of the coil and
then dropping to 0.69A at the top of the coil. My question is: "Can I
believe that I would see a similar current variation in the 'real
world', or is this some failing of EZNEC to model the antenna
properly?"

Regards,
Steve G3TXQ

Yes, you would see this in the real world. EZNEC does a very good job of
modeling a wire antenna with a loading coil, provided that you model the
coil as a wire helix rather than lumped "load", and you can trust the
results. As I've implied, a lumped load is quite a good model for a
physically small, essentially non-radiating loading coil like a toroid
on a magnetic core.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL