Today, when checking Oman at about 1530UTC it was in Arabic.. which is how it had been until about 40 days ago when they switch the english hour from 1400-1500 to 1500-1600.. I am fairly certain this was done for the 7pm-8pm live broadcast on 90.4 Oman FM from Salahlah Festival down along the coast, about 9 hours from Muscat, as 7 to 8pm Muscat time is 15-16UTC.
The Salahlah Festival was over on Saturday August 26th and they did their last live broadcast from there Sunday august 27th. I did not however check the 1400UTC hour of Oman 15140khz via Utwente, but if I were a betting man, my edjumikated guess is that the english hour on 15140khz will revert back to the 1400-1500UTC time slot. ' There are 3 entries in HFCC A17 for 15140khz from Thumrait, Oman 1400-1500UTC English @ 315 degrees which would be the Middle East and Western Europe 1400-2200UTC English @ 220 degrees which would look to be Eastern Africa 1500-2200UTC Arabic @ 315 degrees which would be the same as the lone english hour. Data gleamed from here: http://www.hfcc.org/data/schedbybrc.php?seas=A17&broadc=RSO http://www.itu.int/net/ITU-R/terrestrial/broadcast/images/broad-ciraf2.gif Whenever they were on English all day, as has happened a few times, the signal I got from them in Pennsylvania was so strong in the mid to late afternoon after AIR and Cuba signed off, it would suggest they were on the 315 degree beam and not the 220 degree beam. The long path at 315 degrees is much closer to me then the 220 degree beam and I think even if the 220 degree beam kept heading south and came over the poles, it would possibly maybe reach me but nowhree near as strong as what I'm getting Here is a screen shot of the 15140 beams and long paths for 315 degrees and 220 degrees, courtesy of Stephen Cooper's shortwave.am site:(click the imgur.com link to load the image in a new page) http://imgur.com/a/mdNBh Yes, I have a lot of free time lately, and I am monitoring the same few stations but it keeps my mind busy and active.Plus, I also like some good radio/rf detective work Paul Walker _ Hard-Core-DX mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/hard-core-dx http://www.hard-core-dx.com/ _______________________________________________ THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License published by Michael Stutz at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/dsl.html
