Not necessarily incredulity, but I am curious. The term " generally vertical wires" suggests one or more such wires other than the one through the starboard cabin wall. Where would it/they be? What are the relative amplitudes of the vertical and horizontal currents?
I was using "generally vertical" to refer to all wires exclusive of those forming the legs of the V.
I've attached a screen shot (file: MMANA-GAL_screen) from the antenna simulation software I use most often: MMANA (MININEC3-based), or in this specific case, MMANA-GAL, which is the current iteration. It shows a results summary for the dorsal V at 3.105 MHz and its harmonics. Forget the details of what's being modeled for the moment. Note that the far right column gives the polarization of the radiated field, and that it's vertical for 3.105 and 6.21 MHz, but horizontal for higher frequencies. That's the depth to which I typically go on the polarization issue.
I've attached a screen shot (file: 3105_currents) showing an example of the segment currents for the V at 3105 kHz. The current sums give
some feel, but it's how their effects combine that tells the story. That's what the simulation software is for (and I've never yearned to learn how it does it). In this case the "generally vertical" currents sum to a value very slightly greater than those of the "generally horizontal". I intended to include a screen shot for the 12.42 MHz case, the first one for which MMANA reports a horizontal polarization, but because I used a constant segment size of wavelength/100 it gave far too many lines to include in a screen shot. It gave a sum for the "generally horizontal" segment currents that was 16 times that of the "generally vertical". Again, a
feel, but not the whole story.
We can continue with this until you feel less uncomfortable. If it's going to take a "why" to satisfy, I'll have to work at it, and that will take some motivation and time.
Re: the at-altitude gain pattern, since the fuselage essentially is ground as far as the antenna is concerned, it doesn't matter how far above geographical ground the plane is.
I tend to disagree with that statement in general, but let's look at some specific cases. You indicated in January that you've now modeled the antenna on a wire frame model of the Electra. If you put it at 1000 feet above sea water (I use dielectric constant 80 and conductivity 5 S/m), does it give the same pattern that you get with the fuselage bottom a couple feet above real ground (say 0.6 m and dielectric constant 13 with conductivity 0.005 S/m)? How about above perfect ground at same height? Try it in free space. What does the pattern look like when compared to the other cases?
When I model the antenna over a conductive mat, I get quite different patterns for the three cases.
I've attached a vertical panorama of screen shots (file: dorsal_V_patterns...) of the total, vertical, and horizontal patterns that I got with the dorsal V over a conductive mat 1000 feet above sea water. Do you see anything like this with your model?
Re: your 11 July post, I wasn't aware until you just mentioned it. I somehow missed it. I'm open to insights on the harmonic power paper -- or anything else.
Let's finish this thread first, then move on to that.
Chuck