Haven't studied that antenna at all, so I would be unqualified to try to explain its unusual efficiency.  The best I can do is to furnish some trains of thought and speculations (hypotheses) that might be involved.

Here are some thoughts you might look for in the design.

If there is anything in the antenna that locks up (localizes) the B-field, the antenna may be operating as a curl-free A-potential antenna.  In the early 1980s I worked with Golden, who built such curl-free A-potential antennas and they worked marvelously.  Converting signals to field-free potential signals has a great advantage: while the transmitted magnetic field falls off inversely as the square of the distance, the transmitted curl-free magnetic vector potential falls off inversely as the distance. This makes a remarkable difference in the "range" the antenna will have. E.g., on one of his early A-potential antennas, Golden took a little hand-held CB radio as his transmitter, good for two miles maximum with a normal antenna, and gave it from 20 to 30 miles range.  He used to hit the truckers in their 18-wheelers, on the Interstate, at that range.

Another avenue is to examine what EXH really is.  It's the PORTION of the radiated energy from a radiating source that gets intercepted and diverged by a unit point charge at each distant point of measurement.  It is what is DIVERTED OUT OF the passing energy; it is NOT the entire passing energy.  A river flowing over a fixed rock on the bottom has a certain amount of water that is diverged in a little swirl around that fixed rock.  No one in his right mind would equate that little "swirl" as the total flow of the river. At best, it is only an indication of the INTENSITY of the river's flow at that point.  Many fellows forget that an E-field in our circuit theory is not the actual E-field magnitude itself, but is only the magnitude of the force from the diverged energy differential established around a unit point STATIC charge.  In other words, we really should never use the term "E-field", but should use the term "E-field intensity".  Nonetheless, electrodynamicists and EEs have been a little sloppy, so the literature continues to call that "the" E-field, when it's really the E-field intensity and that is "understood" or supposed to be.

The Poynting component of energy flow is only that small component of the radiated energy that is actually intercepted and diverged into the distant receiving circuit by the surface charges on the waiting antenna/conductors by charges that are relatively "static" with respect to the energy flow.

There is, however, an enormous Heaviside curled component of the transmitted energy, not diverged by that unit static charge that is assumed at every point of detection.  This huge curled component of the energy flow was arbitrarily discarded by Lorentz circa the 1890s.  I don't have his original reference, but I have a 1902 reference (a book by Lorentz, in German) where he shows the arbitrary integration of the energy flow vector itself around a closed surface surrounding any volume element of interest.  That procedure was created by Lorentz so as not to have to explain how every generator and battery (every dipolar source) already pours out far more EM energy than the mechanical shaft energy fed to the generator or the chemical energy dissipated in the battery.  In other words, he was interested in keeping his head on his shoulders, and not being destroyed as a "perpetual motion nut advocating the violation of energy conservation".  So unable to solve the problem (of where in the dickens such an enormous energy flow could be coming from), he eliminated the problem itself.

When the Heaviside curled component is accounted, a generator may often be outputting a trillion times as much total EM energy as the textbooks (still following Lorentz's trick) account for.  I personally believe that the unaccounted Heaviside component produces real effects; in fact, in honor of Heaviside I nominated that enormous extra energy component, surrounding every field/charge interaction, as the probable "dark energy" cause of the excess gravity holding the arms of the spiral galaxies together.  I also used its presence with negative energy as a proposed explanation of the excess antigravity responsible for what is detected as the accelerating expansion of the universe.  Before his tragic death (Heaviside led an absolutely miserable hermit's life in poverty and filth, often signing a letter as WORM), Heaviside did realize the gravitational implications, and some of his notes found beneath the floorboards of his crummy little garret apartment after his death had his gravitational approach (for that extra component) in them.

I put the antigravity approach in my book, Energy from the Vacuum: Concepts and Principles.  At least that way some young grad student working on his doctorate or a young post doctoral scientist may take a further look at it, and even do some experiments with it.  It did seem to work magnificently in the antigravity experiment I convinced Sweet to do.

What this means is that every circuit already has enormous extra EM energy flow surrounding it, but in an unusual curled or swirl form.  The normal divergence action imposed by the surface charges in the receiving conductors reduces that curled Heaviside component to zero insofar as entering the circuit. In other words, a divergence process cannot collect any of the Heaviside energy flow component, a priori since the divergence of the curl is zero.  Even Jackson points out that any amount of swirled energy field can accompany the Poynting diverged component, but then opts for Lorentz's statement that it can have no physical significance.  Of course it has no significance for that immediate diverging circuit, unless something else is added or done to cause some of it to be collected.  Fortunately the Bohren-type experiment demonstrates that one can actually intercept some of that extra Heaviside uncurled component and use it, so that falsifies the old Lorentz statement that it "has no physical significance".

However, a crossed field antenna may also respond to the third direction in optimal manner, not just to the E-field and to the H-field alone.  The question is how it responds to curled Heaviside energy flow, which I do not know because I've not investigated it.  One would have to let the bench experiments explain that, or search the literature to find experiments that have done so, or use a combination of both bench and literature research.

On the next point I have to be a little cautious, because the subject is inverted circuits, discovered  and prototyped by John Bedini and finally "loosely" explained by yours truly (we're still working to improve the explanation, and add in the more technical formulae).  Look at it this way. Consider a circuit with some given voltage and amperage input.  Consider all the j-currents and flows through all the parts and branches and pieces of the circuit.  However, think of them as forming just a convenient "inverted waveguide" with certain dynamics in energy flow interception and diversion, to collect energy onto the moving charges (local potentialization).  So this extra collected energy (the local potentialization) can then be dissipated in the losses along the way, and finally the remainder is dissipated in the load.

We strongly stress one thing:  Energy in a circuit is actually flowing all the time.  It is not there in so many joules as so many ears of corn statically lying in a corncrib.  What is "lying there" seemingly fixed in number of joules at a given point, is actually an ongoing steady divergence of energy in that amount. It's like a fixed little whirlpool in a river.  It appears "static" and fixed, but has internal parts in continuous motion, with each part entering and leaving and continually being replace by subsequent parts entering and leaving.  All the EM static fields and potentials are actually such hidden flows.

In other words, in the circuit one considers the normal currents (which may be made small) --- and their paths and variations ---  just as a complex inverted waveguide inducing waveguide dynamics.

Now envision the unaccounted huge Heaviside component that is precisely tracking all those Poynting flow components through those circuit elements and around them.  We have perhaps a trillion times as much actual EM energy in movement as what the circuit is able to intercept by divergence (divergence attempted on the Heaviside component is just divergence of the curl, which is zero.   Energy from the Heaviside component cannot be extracted by divergence alone).

If part of that huge Heaviside component that is "tracking" through the circuit could be intercepted and collected to provide extra potentialization of the charges, then without disturbing the input voltage and amperage we could trick the flowing charges to be overpotentialized, carrying more energy than they usually have collected and have available for dissipation in the loads and losses.  Hey!  The electrode electrochemists are very familiar with overpotential and overpotential theory, which initiates all the electrode actions.  So we should take a hint from electrochemistry and deliberately cause overpotentialization of the flowing currents  to occur along that circuit's tortuous little paths and routes and functions.

If we do that (accomplish overpotentialization by intercepting some of the Heaviside component), we could then REDUCE the actual carrier current itself, by simply loading the electrons with additional energy rather freely intercepted from the excess Heaviside energy flow component.  So we could reduce the power we ourselves have to input, to run the circuit normally. This type of thing is permissible, since we convert the circuit to a disequilibrium steady state condition (in thermodynamics terms).  Not only do we put in a little energy to just make the inverted waveguide, but the external environment (the Heaviside energy flow component) now furnishes the excess energy necessary to overpotentialize the little carrier currents we paid for.

So we have manipulated the j(phi) vector itself, by producing (nearly freely) a lot of excess phi on the j.  This brings the j(phi) magnitude back to "normal total size", but with a much smaller j and a larger overpotential for the phi.  It thus reduces the power we have to input, while producing the same power output.  This circuit then is permitted by the thermodynamics of disequilibrium steady state theory to exhibit COP>1.0 and even COP= infinity (self-powering, where we take a little of the output and clamp it back as controlled positive feedback to the input).

The physics is good, the thermodynamics is good, and the electrodynamics is good if we re-account Heaviside's long neglected component and recognize that we are free to accomplish overpotentialization of the carrier current j.  We just have to be intelligent enough and diligent enough to work out how to do it.

Such circuits can actually be made (and have been by Bedini) and they can be made to work with a little effort.  In this "inverted" circuit approach, one deliberately "starves" the current, thus reducing the input power VI cos (alpha),  while increasing the energy dissipated in the losses and loads over that which would be normally experienced for that reduced current in an unaltered circuit.  In other words, instead of taking the usual approach that, for a given input, we simply have to add more carriers (draw more current) to get more power, we go the opposite or "inverted" direction: we use less carriers but load them up with more energy by overpotentializing, where the excess energy is freely taken from the always available Heaviside component usually just wasted and not even accounted anymore in all our textbooks.

Bedini has successfully done that, and presently is the only experimenter I know who has done it or even thought of it.  I have his permission to release the "gist" of it, so long as I don't release the technical "how" details to show how he does it.  So we just released the "what", but not the "how".  One does have to turn one's head around backwards, so to speak, and think entirely in reverse from everything we've been taught in normal circuits.

One can also prove the existence of the Heaviside component.  We already know from the standard Bohren experiment that if we were to place those electrons in the j-currents (or even statically fixed in a material)  into particle resonance (not LC resonance, but particle resonance), then once they are oscillating rather than static, they will sweep out a greater reaction cross section in the passing energy flow, thereby sweeping outside the usual Poynting flow component and intercepting some of that neglected Heaviside component, converting it to extra Poynting component.  So such a circuit suddenly ups its output by 18 times or so more than we input, simply from placing the intercepting charged particles into particle resonance.  In the standard Bohren-type experiments, one gets out 18 times as much energy as one inputs by conventional Poynting accounting (one actually inputs an unaccounted Heaviside component as well, but no text pays any attention to that since the 1890s).  Unfortunately such particle resonance occurs in the infrared and ultraviolet range usually.  Nonetheless, you can check it out; the effect is called "negative resonance absorption of the medium".

A good reference on such experiments is Craig F. Bohren, "How can a particle absorb more than the light incident on it?"  American Journal of Physics, 51(4), Apr. 1983, p. 323-327. Under nonlinear conditions, a particle can absorb more energy than is in the light incident on it.  Metallic particles at ultraviolet frequencies are one class of such particles and insulating particles at infrared frequencies are another. See also in the same issue: H. Paul and R. Fischer, {Comment on "How can a particle absorb more than the light incident on it?'}," Am. J. Phys., 51(4), Apr. 1983, p. 327.  The Bohren experiment is repeatable and produces COP = 18.  Anywhere, anytime.

Here's another freebie from an old dog who won't be able to do anything with many things he thought of along the way.  Before leaving, look at that little statement about insulating particles and infrared frequencies.  Take that statement literally! It means that one can --- at least in principle --- make a special kind of resistance material for a resistor, in which at infrared frequencies (say, as the resistor heats up from normal VI heating) some special embedded insulating particles in the resistor go into particle resonance.  If that can be done, the resistor will then begin to "receive" more energy than we pay for in the usual Poynting component, and it will accordingly put out more heat than normally accountable by the Poynting component alone.  This is an old idea I had for an overunity resistor, but never got the chance to do anything with it because I don't have access to a materials lab to work with.  Take a look at it, and see what you think.  Every part of it is already proven experimentally in physics.  But no one seems to have put it all together and formed a requirement for a COP>1.0 ordinary resistor that also functions as a true negative resistor as well, once it starts to heat up.  It would certainly be a good project for a doctoral thesis and investigation, or for a materials laboratory team.

So unless we are using circuits at infrared or ultraviolet frequencies,  the negative absorption effect doesn't do us much good (unless we go develop that crazy kind of COP>1.0 resistor).  I continue to be curious, however, as to why the scientific community doesn't go for an infrared heater process using a variation of the negative resonance absorption effect.  Probably it doesn't because its mindset against COP>1.0 is so great and so rigid.  I always thought a combination of the negative resonance absorption effect to feed anti-Stokes emission (if such could be arranged) would be ideal, since anti-Stokes emission is well-known and is always (even DEFINED) as overunity emission, but it requires replenishment of the energy to the atoms or molecules from which the excess energy is taken (it uses purely the Poynting component, although there may be some experiments somewhere that have done otherwise).  Even better would be if some of these new crazy nonlinear materials they are making could combine the two effects in that manner.  If that were done, then you could even have an additional extension of the "crazy" COP>1.0 resistor, in that it could in theory be made self-powering.

None of that violates the laws of physics or the laws of thermodynamics.  It is perfectly permissible, at least in theory.  It might be a formidable chore to actually develop such, but there are no laws of nature or physics or thermodynamics violated.

But back to the crossed field antenna: It obviously optimizes the Poynting EXH energy flow component's reception in some fashion, or at least we may make that initial hypothesis, since it clearly exhibits increased power delivered to a given range.  Considering the uncurled A-potential available, and the signal oscillations, then dA/dt = - E can possibly convert some of the A-potential into E-field, which is detectable on the E-portion.  If so, that would augment the E-portion of EXH, thereby having converted.  For sine waves A, then there exists a nice 90 degrees phase change in the output E as compared to the input A, but it's negative.  The question for the hypothesis then becomes, how could that - E be being constructively intercepted and utilized to provide extra EXH energy delivered to the distant receiving antenna?

That of course does not answer the question, but is just an hypothesis to be examined.  The approach would be to find how many such hypotheses could reasonably be advanced, then investigate each hypothesis experimentally. When one is found to be confirmed by experiment, then work that trail to hopefully conclude in an explanation of the antenna's uncommon performance.

One may also have to account for effects in the distant antenna, of course. It could be a combination of the two.

Nonetheless, this much is certain.  There is indeed an effect there somewhere that explains the performance.  My own experience is that if a fellow works the problem long enough and determinedly enough, he usually can solve it if he takes the "hypothesis and hypothesis test" approach.  If he just proclaims it to be one thing he has in his mind, that may not be right at all.  It is still just an hypothesis until the bench tells you whether it's true or false, etc.

Best wishes,

Tom Bearden

Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2002 12:28 PM
Crossed field antenna

Thanks Tom and Jerry.

It wasn't the Catt antenna I was referring to Tom, rather the crossed field antenna - conceived by M.C. Hately and F.M. Kabbary around 1988 at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen Scotland.  The first time I heard of Catt was when Jerry mentioned it in his email to me.

Jerry, I really don't think that Catt's ideas about displacement current are correct, as he would like to eliminate the concept entirely whereas Maxwell's theories were developed around the idea of a current flow in the medium, actually displacing the "aether" .

Tom, I can understand your disagreements with Catt.  From what I have read from Jerry's references provided to me last night, it seems that Catt has no use for Maxwell's concept of displacement current, while I believe your theories confer a level of "reality" to displacement current that contrasts significantly with that held by many scientists and engineers today. Personally Tom, I feel your description of all dipoles "breaking symmetry" of the particle flux of the vacuum make much sense.  Mr Catt it seems, is completely on the other side of the fence.

The interesting thing about Hately and Kabbary's crossed field antenna is it's amazing efficiency and the fact that it achieves these gains from its extreme small size (typically 2 or 3 % of the size of a standard 1/4 wavelength radiator).

This brief excerpt from the following reference ( http://www.luminet.net/~wenonah/cfa/ ) captures the essence quite well:

"More than a decade ago, Maurice Hately, a college professor in Scotland, along with his then-student, Fathl Kabbary, began work on a completely different antenna design. The basic premise of this radical design is that a magnetic field can be produced without current flow in a wire. Hately and Kabbary claim that using the reversed (negative solution) form of Maxwell's fourth equation, they were able to prove that a magnetic field does exist between two capacitor plates to which a Radio Frequency voltage has been applied.

From this beginning Hately and Kabbary report they were able to produce direct synthesis of the electromagnetic field using two large capacitor plates and two large cylinders of short length. The capacitor plates, called "D plates" for the term "D" in the Poynting theorem, were positioned parallel to one another to form a capacitor. The cylinders, called "E plates" were positioned one above and one below the D plates. When the cylinders were driven by a radio frequency power source, they produced high-frequency E-fields, thus the designation "E plates".

and to give an idea of the incredible efficiency of the design...

"...This design reportedly produced the same inverse distance field with 30 kW as the conventional one-quarter wavelength vertical it was intended to replace produced with 100 kW. The funnel-top CFA based in Egypt is only 21 feet tall, less than 0.025 wavelengths long. The vertical antenna it replaced was 211 feet long. Test results show up to a 9 dB (800%) advantage over the one-quarter wavelength vertical antenna. "

Tom, with your unique perspective on electromagnetics, and particularly displacement current, and the rather unusual things that can be achieved if we use it correctly, I just thought that you might see something here that others had missed in trying to come to grips with the incredible performance of this design.

Here are some links to a few other good papers on the crossed field antenna. http://www.antennex.com/preview/cfa/cfa.htm http://www.antennex.com/preview/cfa/nab99cfa.htm

Wishing you a speedy and quick recovery from your recent medical problems. Take care of  yourself, as the world needs your unique insights.

I hope this information proves interesting, should you find the time and strength to give it some thought.

Sincerely

Gary Steckly
Technical Policy Analyst
Radiocommunications and Broadcasting Regulatory Branch Industry Canada

Tel:  613-990-4742 Fax: 613-952-9871