I did not know that this million seller book is now freely available on the web site feynmanlectures.caltech.edu.
I suppose I first read the book some twenty years ago, long after I last attended such lectures as a student. The book is based on his lectures given to undergraduate students at Caltech. All freshmen and sophomores were required to take the course regardless of their majors.
The style of the book is far from those of traditional textbooks. One may find difficulties in understanding because there are too few equations.
For us amateur radio operators, why not start reading from Chapter 21-4 The fields of an oscillating dipole (Volulme II).
We start from Maxwell’s equations as usual:
Note that “1” and “2” are the short forms of “(x1, y1, z1)” and “(x2, y2, z2)”, respectively.
Let p be the dipole moment, and with some assumptions and with some tedious calculations, we get:
I suppose you can follow the discussions in the text with no great difficulties, especially if you enjoy fiddling with vector calculus. However, the important part is how you interpret the obtained equations, always evaluating if the model and the assumptions used are applicable to the situation being considered.
What a wonder that such a simple model described as Maxwell’s equations is applicable to so many problems!