Well, to rock today’s perceptions a bit further and highlight a lot of misconception about one type of vertical over another, and use of loading coils for synthetic resonance -
Where the loading coil sits has as much to do with the effective range of a setup, and more so at VHF and upwards where ‘skip’ induced extra range only really occurs in a limited way due to low altitude pressure zones creating a tunnel rather than from high altitude charged layer reflections, as anything affecting the performance in direct EM Extended LOS.
And the type, and no. of quarter waves and half wave sections has a huge amount to do with firing angle and the size and number and patterns of emitted EM nodes that are the embodiment of your Tx’s RF out becoming ‘radio waves’.
But the real nuts and bolts and detail behind that would be a few volumes at least when you have to detail in reference to propagation to put meat on the explanatory bones, I’ll leave anyone who’s interested to go consult an older ARRL or RadCom handbook, like the pre-90s editions and save reinventing yet another wheel unnecessarily.
But in short, where 1/4 wave verticals are mandated, in any service, it’s an artificial engineered range limitation exercise at best - at worst, it’s in today’s terms, pretty wasteful and not very in line with the expectations of green ideals we’re supposed to be embracing.
I guess how I translated the soul of those antenna theory essentials did sound a bit last century radio handbook-ish, but they were good references many of us got our grounding from. As I said elsewhere, perceptions change, time passes, but unless we get a sudden realisation that physics as we know it just isn’t the case, then the physics behind propagation and antennas and feeders and transfer of energy remains true irrespective of what manufacturers claim.