I've never considered it... and normally get shot down when I attempt a tech explanation on pprune but here goes.
Imagine a beacon at a relative bearing of 045 ie 45 degrees to right of the nose.
The forward limb of the ADF antenna on the aircraft will receive a signal slightly phase advanced of the rearward limb(it's closer)! Similarly the right limb gets a signal phase advanced of the left limb.
The receiver resolves all this and points the needle to a RB of 045.
Now consider the extreme case of the same aircraft now at a 90degree bank angle.
Forward - aft signal reception unaffected.
Right - left signal reception now equidistant from transmitter. So equiphase!
No lateral component detected.
ADF needle will point RB= 000
Any advance on this?