quepasa,

I assume you're trying to simplify things so they can be understood by the layman, but I think you focus on minor issues. In todays RC equipment (specifically recievers), the front end RF stages allow for much broader variations without major affect on performance. On a transmitter minor changes to the antenna can have significant changes. on a receiver, not so much. On the receiver end, unless your taking 10% of the antenna length and coiling it, I doubt you could measure the difference with the best test equipment. Considering current RC systems can maintain control beyond reasonable limits of vision, even if you cut the range by 10% you'd still be OK. I've been using the coil technique on small scale planes for years. My preferred method is to wrap on a soda straw with wide spacing.
I've worked in electronics for better than 35 years and even though most of my work wasn't in RF, I couldn't have gotten a degree without some knowledge of how things work.