6m to Alaska

No.  First of all, I didn't know about the 6m opening yesterday to Alaska, nicely reported by EI7GL.

It's certainly an unusual opening.  But it struck me that, though it's a trans-polar path, it's not such a long distance.  We can wrongly think Alaska is spectacularly far away because of the way a sphere is depicted on a flat map.  EI7GL's leading map of the event has dramatic-looking lines that seem to go on forever.  Not his fault, but a product of mapping techniques.

If we look at that flat map, we tend to go 'oooh - so far to Alaska!':

But when we look down on the pole and use a spherical projection, suddenly things look far less impressive.  

The dotted line to the contiguous US is a typical Es path that is seen on many days during the summer season (it's open today, in fact).  It's about 6300km.

The line to Alaska you can already see just by eye is of a very similar length - it's only about 500km further, actually:

Yes, polar fading and so on does make this a path less likely to be successfully worked, and there are of course not so many operators in Alaska anyway.  But we shouldn't be deceived by flat representations of spherical surfaces.

Not that I would complain, had I actually made a QSO with Alaska yesterday!