On Thu, 27 September 2001, Bill Tippett wrote:
> I have never seen much correlation with geomagnetic disturbances
> on this path which makes me think it is not related to the normal skewing
> seen with a geomagnetic disturbance. I recall XZ0A coming in consistently,
> day after day, with little apparent influence from the Kp index. The 80M
> path is also amazingly consistent. If you listen to K6UA and the dawn
> patrol on 75M, it is a rare day that they do NOT work someone on this path.
>
>From my experience in New England, the 80 and 40 meter "skew" path openings
>around local sunrise do appear to be strongly correlated with the sunspot
>cycle. I can't say much about 160 because there are just too few instances of
>it. Around the peak of the cycle, the frequency of occurrence of these
>openings increases greatly compared to near the bottom of the cycle. Last
>year, for example, I would estimate I worked 150 to 200 JA's on 80 meters, and
>the vast majority of these were on the southwest skew path (the rest were
>short path at sunrise and a few were via the southeast long path at sunset).
>During low sunspot years, the 80 meter southwest skew path dries up to almost
>nothing and the JA/Asia openings are almost always short path. 40 meters
>shows the same type of behavior although not as pronounced as on 80. To me it
>is so consistent that I have to believe that other people have noticed it, too.
73, John W1FV
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