We report on experimental results from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Helicon Source plasma source and numerical models used to understand the observations. These include measurements of plasma density with Langmuir probes, and heating measurements with an electron energy analyzer to test transit-time heating. The models describe helicon wave excitation, and electron heating. The wave fields are calculated using the ANTENA code including collisional and electron Landau heating. Numerical and analytic models are used to describe transit-time heating of electrons and quantify the effect of collisions.