Topband: Long Path Direction!

[Rick Karlquist]

D Andersen said:
> On occasions I hear hams talking about the direction of the long path.
> It seems that many hams think that the "long path" is the inverse of the
> "short path.  In reality it is the direction of the gray line.  Right
> now the long path is about 175 degrees in the morning.  A couple of
> months ago it was about 200 degrees.  This excludes skewed paths which
> occur here and there.
>
> Don, w7dd

What I don't understand is this:  if both stations are on the gray line,
why would the propagation be better on the long path than the short path?
Both paths are 100% in "grayness", ie neither daylight nor darkness.

Rick N6RK