RFI: A "good RF ground', part 1.

I had to take care of some errands and see our family lawyer about my
WC injuries tonight so I didn't have time to cut and past from my
notes.

Talking it over with a Physics PHD friend he thought I might want to
barrow
a concept he uses in class to prepare the students for unexpected
reasoning.

So I will pose a simple question and try to answer it Friday or
Saturday as events allow;"When and why do we need a "good RF ground""?

Is it possible that the entire concept of a "good RF ground" blinds us
to
the more important concepts and constraints that reality imposes on
us?

In what may at first blush appear to be an unrelated question; "when
and why would we need a good ground for a 2 "D" cell flashlight""?

It is only after understanding the "when and why" that the utility of
a "good RF ground"
will become clear.

And no I am talking about metaphysics or philosophy here.

I am trying to bring the hard reason of science into the mix.

And I know I am a very poor teacher. I am writing this for a very
diverse group
of people with wildly varying degrees of technical training, personal
radio experience and interest. So please bare with me a few more posts
and I
hope to tie this up into a reasonable series that will form the
nucleus of my
planned web pages. I will flesh out the ideas of each post with links,
research
data, photos and schematics of my test gear and experiments.

Like I said before, think of this as the Cliff Notes version. Basic
concepts
are covered, but a lot of the important detail is lost. It is a lot
like reading
the Cliff notes for "Hamlet" then trying to write a term paper on the
major and\
minor thymes.

Terry