Steve N. wrote:
You might be inclined, and therefore properly understood, if you talk
about the finished product in a slightly different mannor. If the phase
angle and impedance is the same as you would have gotten with some (single
hunk of) reference line, then you could say that it "appears equivalent to"
a such-and-such line with an electrical length of X degrees, but the complex
combinatin no longer has something we can rightly call an electrical length
because it is not an _it_, but a _them_...if you get my drift.

Steve, I put "missing" in quotes because there is no missing part of
the antenna. I've been saying for months that a 75m mobile antenna
doesn't have to be 90 degrees long to be resonant. All that is
required is that (Vfor+Vref) be in phase with (Ifor+Iref) where
those are phasor additions. The real world phase shift accomplished
by an impedance discontinuity is caused by instantaneous interference
and doesn't require a delay. The basics of such an event are covered
in my '05 magazine article available at http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp/energy.htm
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp