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Winged, or X‐shaped, radio sources form a small class of morphologically peculiar extragalactic sources. We present multifrequency radio observations of two such sources. We derive maximum ages since any re‐injection of fresh particles of 34 and 17 Myr for the wings of 3C 223.1 and 3C 403 respectively, based on the lack of synchrotron and inverse Compton losses. On morphological grounds we favour an explanation in terms of a fast realignment of the jet axis which occurred within a few Myr. There is no evidence for merger activity, and the host galaxies are found to reside in no more than poor cluster environments. A number of puzzling questions remain about those sources: in particular, although the black hole could realign on sufficiently short time‐scales, the origin of the realignment is unknown.

The observation of faint radio sources is often limited by the angular resolving power of the radio telescope, and not by its sensitivity. Continuous recording of the output from the receiving apparatus then produces a trace which always shows the sum of the effects of a number of sources in the reception pattern, instead of showing sources passing through the reception pattern one at a time. The apparent intensities of sources found on the records are affected by the presence of several other, fainter, sources in the reception pattern, and even the existence of many of the faint sources is doubtful. Counts of numbers of sources at given intensity levels are therefore unreliable.Any assumed number-intensity law for radio sources can, however, be tested by a method free from the uncertainties due to confusion between adjacent sources, using a direct relation between the number-intensity law and the frequency distribution of deflexions of various sizes on the observed records. The present paper shows the derivation of the relation between M (I) dI, the mean number of radio sources per steradian in the intensity interval dI, and P(D)dD, the probability that the deflexion D recorded at an arbitrary instant lies in the interval dD. Expressions for P(D) are worked out for some specific models of M (I); a comparison with observation has been given in an earlier paper (6).