Normal electromagnetic waves (Beltrami wave fields) in a metachiral medium with constitutive equations in the Post form are investigated. The chirality parameter, and the permittivity and permeability are arbitrary real quantities. Expressions for the wave numbers and wave impedance of propagating, and also evanescent, plane waves are derived. Three regimes of the existence of a pair of forward and backward waves are identified.Keywords: isotropic chiral medium, permittivity, permeability, chirality parameter, Post constitutive equations, forward and backward Beltrami plane waves, positive wave number, wave impedance.The study of electromagnetic activity can be said to have begun with the discovery in the 1920s of materials capable of rotating the polarization plane of light passing through them. Another manifestation of optical activity is circular dichroism. Liquid naturally-active media are completely isotropic, but possess a special molecular structure: they can exist in the form of two enantiomorphic (chiral) modifications. To explain the phenomenon of optical activity, the concept of double circular ray-refraction has been proposed, and a phenomenological theory has been created within the scope of which the material is assumed to be a continuous nonmagnetic medium.Interest in various manifestations of electromagnetic activity in the ultrahigh frequency range grew at the end of the last century in conjunction with searches for artificial chiral electromagnetic materials capable of lowering the radar visibility of objects. At this stage, the arsenal of researchers already has at its disposal three equally well-suited methods of joining the macroscopic Maxwell equations with the equations of state of a bi-anisotropic medium, the material parameters of which in their most general form are the permittivity tensor, the permeability tensor, and the cross-coupling (magnetoelectric) tensor of the vectors of the electromagnetic field. These relations are most often designated at the present time as systems of constitutive equations in the Tellegen form, Drude-Born-Fëdorov form, and Post form. Isotropic composite chiral materials are characterized by three parameters: the scalar permittivity and scalar permeability, and the chirality pseudoscalar. The presence of an additional degree of freedom for controlling the properties of a medium has facilitated the appearance of modifications of microwave devices (chiral lenses, chiral waveguides, etc.), but has not led to radical innovations. The situation changed after the appearance at the beginning of the previous decade (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010) of the concept of metamaterials -composite materials with a markedly broadened range of variation of their material properties. A special term was even proposed to designate a chiral material with both negative permittivity and negative permeability -metachiral medium [1]. In a broad sense, this term is suitable as a name for any kind of artificial material with chiral properties, especial...