[TenTec] Electromagnetic Radiation and accelerating charge

[Ken Brown]

Any time a charge is accelerated and electromagnetic field is produced. Maxwells equations say this, and I am saying this from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope.

 An RF current is constantly accelerating charge, sinusoidal acceleration at the RF frequency.

 Whatever conductor has RF current flowing in it will generate an EM field.

 It does not matter whether it is terminated, open circuit, infinitely long, shorted, grounded, insulated, red, blue, or if you call it an antenna or an elephant. If RF current flows in it, it generates an electromagnic field.

The only way you can make it not radiate (or probably more accurately make it radiate very little) is to have another conductor real close to it and parallel to it that has an equal amplitude and opposite phase RF current flowing in it. Yes there are variations of that, such as coax or a three wire three phase transmission line. The principle is the same, the field produced by one conductors current is canceled by the field(s) produced by the current(s) flowing in the other conductor(s).

DE N6KB at JCMT