Topband: Has anyone seen this before??

[W2RU - Bud Hippisley]

-----Original Message-----
From: VE3MGY
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2007 8:37 AM
Subject: Topband: Has anyone seen this before??

What happened here [Ontario] I have never seen before in a JA opening. There
were 
about half a dozen stations I had really good copy on and they were all 
loudest by far on the 360 degree beverage - right over the pole and with no 
trace of flutter on any signals. [ direct bearing from here is 330 degrees ]

Then two minutes later the only JA I heard was JA5DQH and he was now loudest

on the 270 beverage. To me it looked like the path was originally skewed 30 
degrees East from my bearing [ 330 degrees ]  to a direct polar path [ 360 
degrees ] and then the polar path instantaneously shut down and a path 30 
degrees West opened up here at 270 degrees. I say that because at the same 
time the signals all dropped into the noise on the 360 beverage they 
immediately picked up on the 270 beverage.
******************************

VE3MGY's posting reminds me I forgot to say that the JA (direct SP beam
heading 332 from here) signal-to-noise ratio was far better on my short (250
feet) NW Beverage than my tower vertical.  I've had both up for about six or
seven years now and it is extremely rare for me to even *hear* anything on
that NW Beverage, much less have it be the *better* receiving antenna for
JA!  (I'm guessing that most of the time when I hear JAs on 160 they're
coming in skewed from the West or SW.)  But this morning that NW Beverage
became worth every hour of maintenance I've put into it!  I have only two
Beverages -- the short NW one and a not-so-short NE one, so I can't provide
any azimuthal detail similar to Brian's findings.

In an off-line reply to me, VE3CUI noted that his N/S Beverage was better
than his North-pointing K9AY loop this morning -- a similarly rare
occurrence, in his opinion.  He also notes that he couldn't raise the JR7 he
worked until he switched his TX array from North to NW.

Clearly, Flux / A / K numbers alone are insufficient to explain the
difference between yesterday and today.  What else should I be looking at?  

Bud, W2RU