I'm having a hard time getting a foundation for transmission lines so that I can build to firm understanding and move into some of the math. Firstly, the only difference between a transmission line and a regular copper wire that I can tell is that a piece of copper wire doesnt have distributed capacitance along its length. Is the characteristic impedance of a copper wire its intrinsic inductance in series with its resistance? If it were, then how would that tell me the value of voltage and current associated with the incident wave when the voltage is applied when that inductance and resistance is overall from end to end. Basically, getting rid of the resistance and assuming a lossless copper wire, how would the intrinsic inductance of the wire overall be used to calculate a characteristic impedance for that wire. In addition if a copper wire has almost zero capacitance, wouldn't that move the characteristic impedance toward infinity using the formula sqr(L/C)? Additionally using the formula V\Zo to find the initial current through a conventional transmission line, by what effect will the resistance in the line have in limiting the total current generated by the propagation of the incident wave? For example, consider a transmission line with 50 ohms impedance and assuming that the intrinsic resistance in the wire is in fact not included in the calculated characteristic impedance. If the intrinsic resistance of the wire is very small say .001 ohms then with 100 volts the incident wave will be generating 2 amps of current while the resistance will be limiting the amplitude of that wave by .001 ohms along its path. How would I calculate the amplitude of the incident wave for current or voltage after having reached its destination, whether a terminating impedance or a short circuit without a load...