Ever wonder what the distance from your QTH to the location of the farthest DX you have worked is? Use Google Earth to find out. I plotted the shortest path from my house in Salinas, CA to Reunion Island, my farthest DX contact. The signal may have, and probably did take a different route to the island. And who knows how many hops between the earth and the ionosphere.

My signal leaves my house and heads north over the pole.

Across the north pole and down through eastern Russia.

Across Saudia Arabia and the western tip of Africa.

To Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean.

And, after a distance of 11,324 miles induces a humungas signal into the antenna of FR/DL4BBO.