Topband: FT5XO and 5Z4DZ last night

[Tom Rauch]

>  If any of those midwestern stations were using
directional receive
> antennas, I'd love to hear what direction worked best for
them.  I'm betting
> it wasn't SE.
>
> 'Sorry to call your bet, but I worked them at 00:23 (11
minutes after my SS)
> and the heading was direct shortpath, 112 degrees.
>
> It was a different story two nights before that, when the
signal was near 60
> degrees at SS, shifting to the direct path over the next
hour.

It was impossible to obtain a directional heading here in
middle Georgia for the first several days because of strong
local and regional QRN.

Last night with storms largely gone it was possible to tell
the direction of signal arrival. I noticed a similar
shifting in path.  The path was scattered with best
readability from SE to E minute-to-minute, but as the signal
slowly came up and peaked it was clearly short path.

East had the illusion of being strongest when it was really
just clearest. Noise was considerably less due east
improving S/N, but the strongest signal level was SE.

73 Tom