Jim Kelley wrote in message ...
Tom Bruhns wrote:
There is no such thing as "the voltage" between the ends of your
excited dipole at an instant in time.

Perhaps they meant the voltage 'across' the ends of the dipole. The
ends should always be an electrical half-wave out of phase, right?
There should only be two instants of time during a period when the
difference in potential from end to end is zero.

What are you saying exactly, Tom?

I'm saying that if you measure the voltage between two points on a
good conductor, in a path along that conductor, it will be very small.
The electric field is always perpendicular to a perfect conductor at
the surface of that conductor. For a conductor with resistance, the
drop along it is I*R, and therefore the nearby electric field is in
general not quite perpendicular, but unless it's a darned inefficient
antenna, it's very nearly so.

I'm also saying that the voltage (potential) between two points
depends, in general, on the path you take between the two points. You
should be _especially_ aware of that fact when you're in the presence
of time-varying magnetic fields, such as you have around a powered
antenna.

As I said, if you measure the potential along a line perpendicular to
the antenna, it will be large (when the antenna is excited with some
power). I fully expect the electric field to be high near the wire,
but perpendicular to the wire, NOT parallel to it.

Cheers,
Tom