I assume you're referring to the Friis transmission formula? It only references frequency because that's usually more convenient than wavelength. I hardly think

I assume you're referring to the Friis transmission formula? It only references frequency because that's usually more convenient than wavelength. I hardly think it's fair to call that scientifically illiterate. Also converting from wavelength to frequency is trivial, not jumping through hoops. To be clear, given two identical isotropic antennas (zero gain) in the far field, there absolutely needs to be a frequency^2 term (or 1/wavelength^2) in the "path loss". This is the reason AM radio has so much greater range than FM, for instance. Transmit power, and gain of either or both antennas simply adds (dB) to that path loss. Note that receiving antennas absolutely can have gain. While it does tend to be proportional to area, the "receiving area" concept is actually a somewhat imprecise simplification (consider, what's the area of a Hertzian dipole? or compare the areas of a Yagi and simple dipole).