that the secondary is away from us at, or somewhat after, periastron ($\omega=270-300^\circ$). This is an opposite orientation to that deduced by us in a previous paper (KS08). In the present paper we take the challenge to compare the contradicting conclusions of P09 and KS08. For that we critically follow the arguments of P09 (sections \[sec:xray\] and \[sec:collapse\]), and recheck and improve some of our previous calculations (section \[sec:N\_H\]). We find severe problems with many of their assumptions. We conclude that their model fails to account for the X-ray observations. We also introduce new calculations, and suggest that a polar outflow is responsible to some of the observed soft x-ray emission (section \[sec:diss\]) during the X-ray minimum.

THE X-RAY EMISSION  {#sec:xray}
===================

The hard X-ray emission observed in $\eta$ Car is emitted by the shocked secondary wind (Corcoran et al. 2001; Pittard & Corcoran 2002; Akashi et al. 2006, hereafter A06). For constant winds’ properties, the volume of the shocked secondary wind changes along the orbit as $V \propto r^3$, where $r$ is the orbital separation. The time scale for the shocked gas to flow out of the emitting volume goes as $r$, implying that the amount of gas in 