True Monopole

In Search of the True Monopole

Guy Lawrence Olinger, February 9, 2012
First published on TopBand reflector in four parts

Part One

Cackle Fersus got up that morning and forever afterwards swore something was bent about the day. Nothing had seemed straight or screwed on all the way ever since, and probably wouldn't ever be, unless he could find the True Monopole.

The morning started out with what was left of a dream that night where he was hainted by his ancient elmer, GW3GW, reminding him from the old country that the path to prosperity and pure signals on Top Band could only be had by using a True Monopole, and speaking only True English into a True Microphone.

Cackle wasn't too bothered by the True English or True Microphone specifications in the dream, since he had gotten into nearly exclusive CW, which was not rectified into "wron wo kro" in the telephone, radio and phonograph of left, across street, and right neighbors respectively. But the True Monopole in the haint bothered Cackle greatly as he had imperfect early life memories of experts pronouncing that only vertical monopoles could really give one true happiness on Top Band. All the experts had seemed very tall, and coincidentally rather monopolish themselves.

Consequently that day, Cackle gathered himself up and did something he hadn't done for years since he was cramming for his Extra license. He got down his dusty, but still not filled spiral notebook of radio notes, his EZ-Squeeze pen, and headed off downtown to the big technical library at Old U to get the True English definition of the True Monopole. How could one possibly do a True Search for the True Monopole unless one knew the True Definition. He was not at all prepared for what the search would cost him.

Cackle walked under the great columned facade of the Old U Technical Library expecting little more than his dim memories of college days and snoozing behind books in the stacks while on put-back duty. This evaporated when he opened the doors and wondered if he hadn't gone to the airport instead. Ahead of him was an armed guard, and a row of what looked like airport metal detectors. Cackle stood and stared.

"Put your card in the reader." barked the guard. Cackle continued to stare.

"Put your card in the reader," with more emphasis on each word, and an edge of impatience in his voice.

"What card?"

"Your student or library ID."

"I don't have a card."

"What's your program, I can look you up." The guard started clicking on his keyboard in front of him, the display flashing into a different screen layout. "What's your program?" he repeated when Cackle continued to stare.

"What's a program?" was all that Cackle managed to reply, feeling weirdly like he was still in his haint dream.

"You have to be a student in a program, graduated alumni with a library card, or library subscriber with a current card," rattled off the guard. "If you know your program I can look you up and match your picture ID for the card."

"Oh," wheezed Cackle. "I'm none of those," feeling his face turn red with embarrassment. "How do I get a subscription?"

"And why did..."

The guard cut Cackle off, not bothering to look up from his keyboard. "Budget cuts. Go to Out-Services office, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 8:30 to noon, Building 73 or www.oldulibraryservices.edu and fill out the form. Have a good day," sounding very much like a telephone recording.

"Why did I think I could just walk into a library?" Cackle mumbled to himself aloud, turning to go back out the doors.

"We have procedures," called back the guard, raising his voice.

Finding the True Monopole was going to cost time and money, thought Cackle as he walked back down the steps.

Was he still in his haint dream?

-- To be continued --

Part Two

Finding the True Monopole was going to cost time and money, thought Cackle as he walked back down the steps.

Was he still in his haint dream?

Cackle mindlessly walked straight across the middle yard on one of the crossing walks and stopped at a sidewalk intersection to look around. A young student was walking toward him. She noted Cackle's searching and paused before him.

"Are you looking for something, sir?"

"I suppose I'm looking for building 73."

"Right in front of you." She smiled, pointed, and walked on.

There it was, in plain sight, a "73 - Outservices", black on a white sign, and if he'd kept walking on without pause, he would have tripped over it. Cackle walked over and through the door into 73. A pretty woman who looked as young as the students, was doing something clerical behind the long counter that divided the room in half.

The door closed behind him and rang a chime somewhere in the office. After a pause she looked up.

"May I help you?" She spoke brightly, and with a smile.

"I'd like to subscribe to the technical library."

"I'll be here to help you with that on Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 8:30 to noon, or you can go online to www.oldulibraryservices.edu and fill out the form." She again spoke brightly and still with a smile.

"Would it be possible to have that dealt with today? It's only 1 pm. I have quite a drive home from here, and I would like to spend the afternoon in the library since I set aside the time to get here. I don't want to lose the weekend." Cackle felt a whiney pleading edge creeping into his voice.

"No sir, quite sorry. We've had budget cuts and we do have procedures. Those books have been closed for the day." still brightly and with a smile. "Shall I see you here Monday?"

Cackle let out a breath. "I don't know. Thank you," resolved to remain polite in spite of growing perturbance."

Cackle turned and walked toward the door, without thought mumbling under his breath, "Cheshire Cat."

"Wrong dream." retorted the bright voice.

Cackle shuddered involuntarily, surpressing an urge to run, not walk.

----

Cackle sat in front of his computer, having typed www.oldulibraryservices.e into the URL line on his browser. His finger tapped nervously on the "d" key without depressing it. Suddenly he tapped the key too hard and he was staring at www.oldulibraryservices.ed on the URL line.

Cackle jerked his hands back like he had been slapped.

I've spent all day, he thought, trying to do some research on the True Monopole. He sighed out loud. No. I'm trying to research "monopole" and get the True Definition. No, no, no, get a scientific definition of a monopole. I'm looking for the proper definition of monopole. He found himself reliving the dream and Elmer Wills repeating "True Monopole" over and over again, as if the words were meant to torture.

"What AM I doing?" Cackle spoke aloud, jumping up from the desk. "Why do I care anything about a monopole. This is all crazy. STUPID DREAM!"

Cackle immediately felt dread and foreboding, as if he had done something so evil as curse God. He was surely going insane. True Monopole.

He sat back down and typed "u", then "enter".

The Old U page came up and flashed through some ads on extension classes, then a drill down menu of services and departments. Cackle clicked on "Library". Then on "Community Library Subscriptions". Briefly a picture flashed of the Technical Library building, and then a popup page:

To enter data to Library Services pages, please log on. If you do not have an account, please register.

Cackle's sense of foreboding was returning. He clicked on the "Register" button. He filled out all the entry fields and clicked the submit button. A window popped up telling him he should shortly receive an email, and please follow the instructions to complete your registration.

In a scant 30 seconds Cackle had a new email in his inbox. It contained a URL to click to verify that he was the one who had made the request. Cackle clicked on the link, which brought up a browser. A little bit of relief began to set in, and then dissipated as the browser displayed a window. It read:

Thank You, Cackle Fersus, for registering for Old U Library Services. The administrator will process your request and set up your account where you may arrange for services and payment, and use Library online facilities.

Due to budget cuts, these applications are only handled Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 8:30 AM to 12:00 Noon. Thank you for your patience. -- Old U Outservices.

"Handled by the Cheshire Cat," growled Cackle. He was thinking about his recurring dream where he parks his car somewhere, and it's not there when he comes back, and he can never find it.

----

Cackle was sitting up in his bed, dreading going to sleep. "This is crazy," speaking aloud to no one else in the room. "None of this makes sense. None of this is worth losing sleep." Cackle laid back on his pillow and reached up to turn off his reading light, plunging the room into darkness. He fell asleep almost instantly.

Elmer Wills was holding up an Ipad for him to view, displaying a web page. Pointing to it Elmer said, "Not a mon-o-pole. Five pole," in the voice of Jacob Marley. Cackle was wondering to himself, how did Elmer get an Ipad?

-- To be continued --

Part Three

Cackle was sitting up in his bed, dreading going to sleep. "This is crazy," speaking aloud to no one else in the room. "None of this makes sense. None of this is worth losing sleep." Cackle laid back on his pillow and reached up to turn off his reading light, plunging the room into darkness. He fell asleep almost instantly.

Elmer Wills the Haint was holding up an I-pad for him to view, displaying a web page. Pointing to it Elmer said, "Not a mon-o-pole. Five pole," in the voice of Jacob Marley.

In that part of us that knows it's a dream and watches the dream from off to the side, Cackle was wondering, he died in 1985, how did Elmer get an I-pad?

"Not a mon-o-pole. Five pole," the haint repeated. Cackle stood still in the haint dream, saying nothing.

"NOT A MON-O-POLE. FIVE POLE," now in a rattle-chain voice that made Cackle vibrate.

Elmer waved the I-pad in Cackle's face. Cackle looked. A picture of a UHF quarter-wave ground-plane with four quarterwave rigid tubing radials angling downward at 45 degrees, mounted on a pipe with a coax feed emerging from the pipe at the bottom. Five identical metal tubes in five directions. Underneath the picture in bold print, "Monopole".

In the off-to-the-side Cackle, he was wondering, I'm going to have a technical discussion with my elmer's ghost in a haint dream?

The in-the-dream Cackle was forcing himself to say something, the kind of forced speech for real that wakes dreamers up, "Only the vertical radiates," defending the caption.

Elmer Wills increased five fold in size, taking an angry visage, and speaking in an ear-rattling thunderous voice, "RADIALS RADIATE!! COAX RADIATES!! NOT TRUE MONOPOLE!!"

The angry visage faded out as Cackle woke up in a sweat.

"I am having a technical discussion with my elmer's ghost in a haint dream," Cackle spoke aloud to no one in the still dark room. The ghostly projection clock numbers on the ceiling said 3:30 AM.

Cackle sat in the darkness for a while, and then realizing he had to sleep regardless, lay back down. He quickly fell asleep again and had his recurring dream about parking his car and then not being able to find it.

----

Cackle awoke after daybreak in a foul mood. Unlike most of his dreams whose content was remembered barely or hazily at best the morning after, he remembered last night's pair of dreams in full 3D, technicolor, and surround sound. Cackle was tired, annoyed, confused, angry, and resentful, in addition to his normal I-haven't-had-my-coffee cranky.

He was still discouraged by his previous afternoon and evening's time on the internet where it became clear that "monopole" had been used to describe everything from a ground plane antenna to a folded dipole, to an AM broadcast tower, to a magnet that was impossible, and now apparently possible if the magnets were molecule sized. No one had actually made or seen one, but the authors were very positive it could be done. Right, thought Cackle. PROVE IT!

He was discouraged by the planet-wrapping volume of Google hits on "monopole". Cackle had done some minor arithmetic and figured that five minutes to read and understand each of 8 million hits on "monopole" would take 379 work-years for the lot, and would probably increase in number at a rate faster than he could read them. He was completely at the mercy of whatever Google algorithm put references at the top of the list. Who was in charge of the algorithm, he wondered. Suppose reference number 5,187,473 was the miracle reference, or even number 134,299? How would he ever find it?

Cackle wandered into his kitchen to make some coffee. Sitting at his dinette he looked across into the living room and his bookshelves. He saw his old college textbooks. Then he remembered Terman's. "Electronic and Radio Engineering". Did he have it? He got up, walked over and found it. He sat back down at the table to read. Fourth edition, copyright 1932, 1937, 1947, 1955. Elmer would approve.

"Monopole" was not in the index. Not a good sign. Two hours later Cackle had a sense of where the great Professor Terman was on the subject of "poles". Reading the entire section on antennas, if anything the book cast doubt on the true existence of a monopole. The shield current was always going someplace. Often called a "mirror" at the time, it would be another pole to the "mono". Any counterpoise was a pole. But there was no single quotation, page number, book and publisher from the ancient master he could quote to the haint and shut him up. Then he remembered something.

With a flash of how-could-I-be-so-stupid regret, Cackle went over to his computer desk, called up Google again, and typed "monopole antenna" into the search field. Down to 670,000 hits. Only 32 work-years to read. But the top listings were different from yesterday's.

Cackle clicked on a URL that said "Images for monopole antenna". A page came up with several hundred picture icons of what were called monopoles. Cackle clicked on one that tugged on his memory, to enlarge it. Another pause, a new page, and...

There staring him in the face was THE image of the "monopole" from Elmer's I-pad in his dream. "Elmer the Haint surfs the internet." he said aloud. "Elmer's right, no way that's a monopole." A long pause, as he stared at the photo. "But it's not a five pole, either." Cackle started reading, and read and read and read, drilling down from the photos.

-- To be continued --

Part Four of Four

There staring Cackle in the face was THE image of the "monopole" from Elmer's I-pad in his dream. "Elmer the Haint surfs the internet." he said aloud. "Elmer's right, no way that's a monopole." A long pause, as he stared at the photo. "But it's not a five pole, either." Cackle started reading, and read and read and read, drilling down from the photos and then branching out. He had found the mother lode on "monopole".

Eventually he found a "monopole" that was a self-supporting tower fed with the feed coax shield attached near the ground, and the center conductor connected to a gamma match point up the tower. A bit of excitement started, as perhaps this was "the one". But as he read farther, it was supported by another tower section as a base in a hole in the ground, held fast by pouring concrete into the hole around the section.

The owner had measured the current beneath the shield attachment to see how much was going into the earth. While the current was not large compared to the current up the tower, it WAS current. Since the resistance of the earth connection was not known, the power loss in the connection was not known either. It wasn't a True Monopole. It was, Cackle realized with regret, a whole pole plus part of a pole in the hole. It was a One Point One Pole. And since even a tenth of a pole is a pole nonetheless, it was not a true monopole. The article did not even mention current on the coax.

Cackle repeated this cycle of discovery and realization numerous times as he drilled through the material.

A "monopole" was really what something looked like, not how it worked or behaved. And even "looked like" was sometimes a stretch of the imagination.

Every pole had a counter-pole. You can't do a push to one without a pull from the other, or a pull without a push. The counterpole was often what the article failed to mention or was found way down in the fine print. The pole was driven with energy which they wanted to radiate. The counterpole was driven with energy, which might radiate, might be returned, might be dissipated as heat, or some combination of the three, but was never absent. The counterpole was always there, somewhere, somehow. On low frequencies, a well-designed counterpole radiated as little as possible, dissipated as little as possible, returned as much as possible.

There was no true monopole. It was like the snipe, which is only understood in the never finding. The True Answer to the challenge to find the True Monopole was that it was not to be found. It required the search to convince.

Finally, with the sun going down in his western window, still in his pajamas, he stood up, slowly breaking out into a big smile.

"I have a bone to pick with my haint," he said to no one. "Let's see if he comes around tonight."

Cackle, suddenly very hungry, walked over to his refrigerator, pulled out some eggs, and started to make himself some breakfast.

After having breakfast at suppertime, Cackle watched TV, and went to bed at his normal time without ever having changed out of his pajamas.

----

There again was Elmer the Haint, as Jacob Marley.

"Not a mon-o-pole. Five pole," growled the haint.

Cackle had rehearsed his reply, and oddly in his dream was remembering the rehearsing. He forced himself to speak aloud.

"Two poles. The vertical is one pole, and everything underneath is the counter-pole. Current in the counter-pole goes anywhere it can, radiates or dissipates, or returns."

Cackle woke himself up with that spoken assertion. He sat up in the bed. There at the foot of the bed, in a glowing, transparent, shimmering apparition, stood Elmer Wills, with his I-pad in hand. For a while they just looked at each other, and then Cackle finally verbalized what had been nagging him from the start.

"Why are you here, Elmer? For the technical discussion?"

Cackle waited for the haint to say something, do something.

The haint did nothing and stood there, but was slowly shimmering into the early Elmer that Cackle remembered. The haint finally spoke. "If you do not search for truth and understanding in your favorite things, will you search for truth and understanding anywhere else?" asked the haint. "What else is lost if you don't?"

Minutes went by in silence.

As the purpose of the haint's visit slowly dawned on him, Cackle thought about the reasons for his empty house. "No. You won't search," said Cackle. "You won't search. And you can lose everything."

Another long pause, "Is THAT why you are here?" asked Cackle, somehow realizing that Elmer could read his thoughts.

The haint broke out into the smile Cackle remembered when he understood something from Elmer for the first time and could explain it back.

"You were my favorite," said the haint. "I always watch to see how you are doing."

And then with a perfect Cheshire Cat imitation, Elmer faded away, smile last.

With a sigh, Cackle started to lay back, but a tiny glimmer in the now dark room caught his eye. The glimmer increased to firefly size, then bumblebee size, and then butterfly size, continuing to grow.

Taking his sweet time, the haint rematerialized, coming back in his Jacob Marley pose and voice.

"True Ground," moaned the haint, "True Ground."

"No way," laughed Cackle, "No way, Haint. Halloween is O-Ver. Come back next year." Cackle fell back in the bed laughing in that high stacatto laugh that earned him his nickname as a schoolboy. Still laughing, he pushed himself back up on his elbows to look at the haint.

The haint was having a hard time maintaining Jacob Marley's visage, and finally breaking into uncontrollable laughter, Elmer Wills faded away.

Cackle fell back on the bed again. His third-to-last thought, as he drifted into a deep dreamless sleep, was that True Ground didn't exist, just dirt, and that always had to be accounted for. His second-to-last thought was wondering whether the Terman's would be in the bookshelf or on the breakfast table when he woke up. His last thought was that he had work to do.

--30--

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