Emptying a trace's relay path — right, since those bytes were readings all
along — left the card contradicting itself: three legs on the links row,
"direct — no relays" two lines under it, and a note crediting the reading
to a sender nothing had relayed for.
An empty chain means different things by class. For every other frame it
means the sender was heard straight off the air. For a trace it means the
relays went unrecorded, which is not the same claim at all — the readings
are proof something forwarded it. So the row says how far the packet got,
which is the one thing those readings do establish, and the reception note
goes back to naming the last relay.
Jean-Pierre Martineau
1b6a5cc1e7