-----Original Message-----
From: topband-admin@contesting.com
[mailto:topband-admin@contesting.com]On Behalf Of Tom Rauch
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2001 9:57 AM
To: Topband@contesting.com; Ford Peterson; Milt Jensen
Subject: Re: Topband: RE: skewed paths
Scattering at the ends of the path makes no sense at all, because
if it was scattering there would have to be dumb luck at both ends
of the path for headings to be skewed into the SAME area of the
sky.
The fact both ends beam into the skew obviously means the path
itself is skewed someplace far from the stations at each end, or the
people involved are the luckiest people in the world to have such
weirdly repetitious luck that both ends just happen to bend the
same amount at the same time.
---------------------------
A belated comment on W8JI's remarks, based on the many southwest "skew" path
JA's I've worked on 80 over the years: JA's with rotary or directional
antennas have told me that when I'm working them on this path, they are
beaming toward ZL. Could the location of skewing be somewhere in the South
Pacific? I don't know but the circumstantial evidence does suggest the
skewing is occurring far from either end of the path.
Also, when 9V1XQ was active on 80 with a 4-square, he would frequently work
the USA at our sunset. The path was a southeast skew path from W1. He
would beam southwest from 9V1 and sometimes had S9+ signals into W1. A few
times I remember him switching his array from the USA to Europe (roughly
northwest from 9V1) and his signals would drop from the southeast and peak
up from the northeast, which is close to short path (true SP is a few
degrees east of north). I heard him twice on 160 from the southeast at our
sunset but was never able to work him there.
73, John W1FV
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