Hello Steve and all,
It is indeed a valid question and the CFA is certainly a
worth-while subject of
investigations.
Maurice Hately, GM3HAT the developer of the CFA antenna,
wrote a preliminary
article in the March 1989 issue of Wireless Word, entitled
"Maxwell's Equations
and the Crossed Field Antenna".
The whole antenna was described in Wireless World for
December 1990, with
follow on letters in the May and June 1991 issues.
Over the years, I wrote several times to Maurice Hately,
asking for further
details. He also had a short-wave kit available for a while,
and I also tried
to purchase it. To no avail.
More recently (1998) Mr. Hately advertised in Electronics
World and Wireless
World to the effect that one of his antennas had been
installed in Tanta (a
town in the Nile delta in Egypt) and was used by the
Egyptian Broadcasting
authorities on Medium Wave.
Mr. Hately claimed that whenever the Tanta transmitter was
connected to his
antenna, it could be heard in Europe.  I was traveling
through Europe at the
time (October 1998), but was never able to hear the Tanta
transmitter.
Considering that the purpose of a medium wave antenna is to
create as large a
ground wave as possible, and reduce the sky wave to a
minimum, the fact that
Tanta could apparently be heard in Europe is not necessarily
a good quality.
It remains that the whole concept of synthesizing a Pointing
vector is a
fascinating idea, well worth thinking about. (i.e., using a
dubious metaphor,
let us not throw out the baby with the bath water)
73
Andre' N4ICK
***********************************
Steve Olney wrote:

G'day All,

I know I am a little early for the 1st of April, but what ever happened to
the revolutionary CFA (crossed field antenna) ?    There was a series of
articles on the 'net promising many things and tantalisingly details of its
construction - then it just seemed to disappear down a PL-259 plug hole!

Did it go the way of 'cold fusion' or some other demise?

73s Steve Olney (VK2ZTO - QF56IK : Lat -33 34 07, Long +150 44 40)