North south east west

[RichieC1]

Do you know what countries are due east of us? How about due west?

Would you believe that the Congo and Mozambique are due east and Mexico and central Australia is due west. Europe is roughly NNE and the US is NNW. How do I know this, go to NS6T.net. Put in West Palm Beach as your location and 20000 as the distance then create map. You will see that Europe is actually at 45 degrees and the US is between 300 and 330 degrees.

If you are using an antenna that has some directional properties, make sure you position it so you get the correct propagation.

[aj1q]

Curious what country you are in? Brazil?

[RichieC1]

You are correct. The mapping software on that website must be incorrect.

I went on Google Earth, turned on the longitude and latitude lines and found that WPB is roughly on the 27N parallel. Following that east across the world, it goes through Western Sahara, Algeria, Libya and Egypt, which is farther north in Africa so I think that mapping software on the website is incorrect.

However, it still means that placing your directional antenna (dipole, end fed, off center fed dipole, yagi) in an east/west position, you are not pointed to Europe, which is between the 40N and 60N parallel while most of the US is above the 30N parallel.

[KA4D]

https://ns6t.net is correct and I highly recommend it. The azimuthal map is a neat tool - that it's free makes it even better.

You'll recall that the earth is a globe. Although we share the same latitude as north Africa, the shortest distance between two points on the globe is not a straight line (latitude or longitude) but a great circle route - a line that follows the curvature of the earth.

Transcontinental pilots are intimately familiar with this. A few years back my wife and I flew to Scotland via Ireland; I've a picture of Newfoundland, Canada, taken from the window of the plane as we passed overhead on a heading of about 45 degrees NE. This seems wrong, given that if you look at most maps, a flight in that direction would appear to take you to southern Greenland.

An azimuthal projection (what ns6t.net generates) creates a map of the earth based on our current position and the great circle routes. At short distances, the earth is effectively "flat" so the flat map aligns with our expectations of north, south, east and west. However, the greater the distance, the more distorted the direction appears because of the great circle. So if you're flying direct from Palm Beach County - or aiming a radio wave - Madagascar is due east, Australia is due west and Japan is at 330 degrees NW.

Try entering different locations into ns6t.net. For example, Sydney, Australia. From there, the great circle route to South America is actually SE, and to both South Africa and Morocco it's SW.

[RichieC1]

Thanks, Brent, for the explanation.