Of course it is very funny and the laugh is still on you. Yes, you quoted me entirely, but you took out the intended meaning and context of the word 'conducive', which is to 'promote', and you imposed the electronic or physics related context. A surface wave cannot exist unless there is a surface, therefore a surface is 'conducive' or tends to 'promote' the creation and existence of a surface wave. Get it?
You are a joke.
If we are talking about surface impedance or the pass through rate of the material, then of course there will be some energy loss. Not all surface material are pass through, like a radome, and all surfaces have some measurable impedance. But in general, a surface wave is continuously supported as long as the transmitter wave exist. It is the creeping wave on the shadow side that will eventually die if the electrical path, or the object's dimension, is long enough. If we go back to the surface wave, if the material's pass through, or absorption rate, and surface impedance, are not greater than the energy level of the original transmission wave, then the surface wave does not die.
What the hell...??? That 'supporting wave' is the incident wave, or the radar transmission itself...!!! So why would it lose energy unless it is turned off...???
No...It is the surface, or the body, that create, or is 'conducive' to the creation of surface waves. Get it? There is no need to address the rest of your gibberish because it is based upon your flawed understanding of the word 'conducive'.
You are trying to salvage the argument that the JXX's canards are not detrimental to its RCS. I am saying that they can -- not must -- be and the potential is high based upon diffraction fields created by 'knife edge' diffraction behavior. I presented sources that supported my arguments. So where are your sources that says diffraction fields are irrelevant in RCS prediction? You cannot find such sources because THEY DO NOT EXISTS...!!! All RCS predictive methods take into consideration diffraction fields locations, potential or otherwise. If 'knife edge' diffractions does not matter, why does Ufimtsev created pretty much the definitive text about them?
So where are your sources that says diffraction fields do not matter in RCS predictive and possibly reduction methods?
All right, tell me wether a conductive surface is ‘conducive’ to surface waves?
Again for your easy reading, at popular science level, refer to the following article:
Electromagnetic Surface Waves
J. Zenneck [1], in 1907, was the first to analyze a solution of Maxwell's equations that had a "surface wave" property. This so-called Zenneck wave is simply a vertically polarized plane wave solution to Maxwell's equations in the presence of
a planar boundary that separates free space from a half space with a finite conductivity.
…
More accurately, for the case of vertical polarization, the presence of the conducting boundary allows the energy of the wave to extend down to the boundary in a significant manner (in contrast to the horizontally polarized case where the boundary condition mostly excludes the wave from the region near the surface). When we allow the boundary to be curved, as in the case of propagation around a sphere, the curvature of the surface leads to diffraction effects, yielding propagation of the wave beyond the geometrical horizon…
NOTE ON THE TERM "SURFACE WAVE": There is no agreement on the name for this subject. The term ``ground wave'' is also used, as are other terms. Furthermore, the meanings of these terms vary from one author to another.
We also note that the phenomenon of surface waves is closely related to that of creeping waves and traveling waves in electromagnetic scattering theory.
In fact, surface EM waves (SEMWs) are still not fully understood. Attempting to change the fact by being a fundamentalist just won’t work:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1063-7869/51/1/L06/pdf/PHU_51_1_L06.pdf
…
Many aspects of excitation and propagation of the
SEMWs still remain uninvestigated. We know bulk (three-
dimensional) electromagnetic waves, slow surface waves, and
rapid surface waves, among which the Zenneck surface
electromagnetic waves occupy a special place [1]. The theory
of these waves was worked out by Zenneck [1] and
Sommerfeld [2]. Many physicists both in this country and
abroad [3 ± 6] have published contradictory data concerning
the Zenneck surface electromagnetic waves and go as far as
`proving' theoretically that they cannot and do not exist [7].
I feel really sorry that you made another joke when I asked you about the “supporting wave” in my leading questions.
There is no such thing called “supporting wave”. Incident EM field and free electron distribution in a conductor (or polarization of the medium if not conductive) are at equilibrium instantly (in general), through the interface. They affect each other in the establishment of the EM wave around the interface and beyond. The field in the vacuum is caused by Hertz radiation of the (radar) source and by excited electrons in the medium (a good approximation is dipole approximation). If the incident wave and excited wave are in phase, the field in the vacuum(or the medium where the source is) but close to the interface will be enhanced; if they are out of phase, they’ll be cancelled. So-called Brewster’s angle
Brewster's angle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is when incident wave and wave excited by the dipoles in the medium happen to cancel each other completely. In this case, a radar (or whatever) detector will not get any reflection, if the polarization of the source is parallel (or is a ‘P’ wave).
Exception about the “instant” equilibrium mentioned above dose exist but rarely. A well know is so called “Cherenkov radiation” honored after Soviet Physicist Pavel Cherenkov
Pavel Cherenkov - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia where radiation source (charged particles) move faster than the speed of light in the medium. This is of course out of our scope, but we must bear exceptions in our mind when we talk.
In general, if the EM frequency is <10^17 Hz, many conductors behave like an ideal conductor. In EM sense, this means free electrons only exist on the surface, not in the body of the conductor. In this case, all above statements can be applied to our radar discussion, except (yes, another except) the radar’s pulse is extremely short that it only lasts one or two wavelength. In centimeter band, it means the pulse lasts only 10^-10 second. Well, I for the moment can’t see practical use of this equipment, as (the Fourier Transformation will see) there are lots of noises due to the short duration.
Now, let’s go back to hose water shooting a car vs EM wave shining an interface, since you avoided my questions.
The dynamics of (source-less) fluid motion follows Laplace equation ΔΦ= 0. Boundary conditions, among others, are that the speed of the fluid layer that contacts the car surface has to be 0. This is because continuity of speed has to preserve so to make it the same speed as the car surface, which is 0. Thus, it doesn’t matter how fast your host water is, an infinitesimal thin layer of water attached on the car surface is always with 0 speed.
In classical EM theory, the dynamics is described by Maxwell equations. Please check out this good wiki page,
Maxwell's equations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia it gives the boundary conditions as well. See how different they are!
Only for static EM case and with no free charges, can the behaviors of the two (fluid and EM) be described with the same Laplace equation, of course with different interpretations of the function Φ. They nonetheless still have different boundary conditions to constrain, which may lead to different solutions.
BTW, I’m glad that you first admitted that a “sandwich” configuration is not fit for offensive, now admit that EM surface wave does damp in energy. So, there is no need for a superconductor enemy airplane…
BTW again, I never asserted, nor did I deny the existence of XX. As a canard adds inhomogeneity of the medium, as I said, it will in general introduce more radar scattering.
in·ho·mo·ge·ne·i·ty ( n-h m -j -n -t , -n -, h m -)
n. pl. in·ho·mo·ge·ne·i·ties
1. Lack of homogeneity.
2. Something that is not homogeneous or uniform.
inhomogeneity - definition of inhomogeneity by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.
Bottom line: science is a hard reality, so host water!= radar wave; democracy is persuasion, you can fool a majority via fundamentalist approach to build the vote bank by making host water = radar wave.