lol, im sorry i said the s word eddie,
i don't doubt your results and yes of course how the test is done effects the results, so do things that you could not imagine in your wildest dreams, unfortunately i don't have any details about how the test is been conducted,
what you claim about your duster vs some of your antennas is inline with what w8ji says about the situation too,
testing in dx is very difficult but you can get an idea of trends, my hybrid talks better long range skip while the i10k is great on shorter high angle skip, it would have been cool to hear you switch antennas in dx to my "duck" of the bay buddy 4040 but he messed it up
if a beacon appeared on the band here the foxhunting crew would track it down, it would drive us nuts not knowing where it was comming from,
as for one antenna been in front one minute and another the next id say it has to be the ionosphere or something in the sky,
we are also seeing variable conditions after years of rock stable fm signals, fluttering multipath type effects on a regular basis its most notable when talking to the guy using the gainmaster who is the most distant of our local net,
you should see what happens between me and my buddy the other side of this hill when a plane comming in to land at leeds/bradford flys over,
i get the multipath flutter that has his noisy s-4 start swaying faster and faster up to s-8 and sometimes more with full quieting,
then the flutter slows back down signal drops untill the plane gets over near me and it starts again, how high they are also effects what we see on the radio,
years ago british post office engineeers and engineers in other countrys had also observed interference to signals when planes flew near their receivers,
fortunately for us a scotsman, sir robert watson watt led a team in the race to make use of the effect, the rest is radar history,
what do you have on your radar eddie