>Wonder why seems to be a habit use a series coil to tune out the
>capacitance of the 136kHz aerial, instead of more normal sort of matching
>- using T- or L-network

Actually, using an inductor to ground, with a tap for the feed point, IS a
high-pass L network. The portion below the tap represents inductive
reactance, and the part above is capacitive (the inductive reactance of the
coil is set lower than the capacitive reactance of the antenna).

John Andrews, W1TAG