Richard Harrison wrote:

"A wire antenna is a circuit with distributed constants;

Terman, Kraus, Balanis, ... what do they know? :-)

Apparently, a lot of the otherwise knowledgeable people
on this newsgroup have forgotten that the formula for
the characteristic impedance of a single-wire transmission
line is 138*log(4h/d) where h is the height of the wire
above ground and d is the diameter of the wire. There's
no difference between that single-wire transmission line
and a lot of ham antennas. That single-wire transmission
line radiates just like an antenna.

1/2WL of #16 wire 24 feet in the air has a Z0 of 600 ohms.

If that center-fed dipole were terminated at each end with
a 600 ohm load, it would be a traveling-wave antenna with
a feedpoint impedance of 600 ohms. Take away the loads and
there's a match to 50 ohm coax at the feedpoint.

The only difference in those two antennas is that removing
the loads turned the antenna into a standing-wave antenna
and reflections are arriving back at the feedpoint, lowering
the feedpoint impedance.

Any coil installed in a standing wave antenna is going to
be subjected to both forward and reflected currents. There
is no hope of understanding the current in a loading coil
without understanding the component currents flowing both
directions through the loading coil.
--
73, Cecil, W5DXP