[en] Observations of low frequency solar type III radio bursts and the associated fast solar electrons show that the total path length travelled by the particles between the Sun and the Earth is significantly greater than the length of the smooth Archimedean spiral trajectory followed by the centroid of the type III exciter (Alvarez et al., 1975). Here it is assumed that the ratio of electron path length and the spiral length increases approximately as rsup(n), where r is heliocentric distance, and then compute the radio bursts arrival time at 1 AU for different values of n. A comparison with the radio observations indicates that the best fit occurs for n=1.5+-1.0. These results are interpreted in terms of the variation of electron scattering with heliocentric distance. (Auth.)