Why must engineere resort to quoting from their worshipped Guru's who are
hardly more likely to be correct than they are themslves.

That's easy, because most of the time we have no other choice. When designing
circuits, antennas, troubleshooting, or talking to newsgroups, we have to rely
on other's research. There is no way we can experimentally verify all the data
sheets. charts, graphs, computer programs ect. that are available.
Quoting the last 100 years of antenna research, from worshipped Guru's should
not be a bad thing, because most of us will never have the opportunity to prove
them incorrect. I assume many of the Guru's did the research.
Reg, I am sure you have found numerous errors in Guru's texts, and have tried
to point them out to us. But you cant't just go out in the back yard and burn
all those books:-) Who would we then quote?
73 Gary N4AST