While I’m still shopping for schools, (I think Midway Aviators will be the one…), I’ve started listening to ATC, or Air Traffic Control. LiveATC.net offers live streams from control towers, and as geeky as that sounds, I’m enjoying it.
Mostly I’m listening to KDPA (Chicago DuPage) because it’s not too busy. The KORD (O’Hare) ATC is so crazy I can barely track one plane in the mix. But at KDPA I’m beginning to hear the ebb and flow. Everyone reads back the commands so I get to hear most of the it twice, but it seems like the readback is in some sort of shorthand.
It’s pretty cool to be able to listen to the calls and look at the runway map to figure out where folks are landing. I also hear a lot of touch-and-go calls. I like hearing them because I think it means those pilots are in training. I could be completely wrong about that, but that’s my guess.
One thing that I haven’t heard is ground control, which runs on a different frequency. I’m not sure how that interplay works yet.