Live ATC Feeds from LiveATC.net
Listening to Air Traffic Control (ATC) can be a great way to get used to the phrases used between pilots and controllers. If you can listen to your local ATC it also helps familiarize you with local procedures so they don’t come as a surprise when you hear them in the air. You can listen sitting in the aircraft but thats usually not too convenient. If you have an AM scanner and are close enough to your ATC facility to get a signal you can listen at home but that requires investment in more gear. There have been some live ATC feeds online but these have been somewhat patchy and didn’t have much selection - little chance of hearing your local controllers. Today I heard about LiveATC.net and so I popped over to see what was there.
At the time of writing, the site has 97 live ATC feeds available, predominantly from the United States but also from Canada and other countries overseas. To allow you to find the feeds you are interested in they are divided up into HF (trans-oceanic flights), US Class B airports, US Class C airports, US Class D airports and Centers, Canada and International.
Where do these feeds come from and what are they?
A LiveATC.net “feed” is an audio stream provided by a volunteer, usually referred to as a “feeder”. Each stream is sent into the LiveATC.net audio distribution system so that any interested listener can tune it. The audio distribution system consists of a network of streaming audio servers which effectively make the single stream sent by the “feeder” available to many listeners.
They have a wide variety of ATC facilities available to listen to, the Class B feeds include Boston’s Class B which is a popular choice for listeners as it has Clearance/Ground, Tower and Approach/Departure all available online so you can follow many of the significant tranmissions of departing and arriving traffic. As I described in a previous post its worth downloading the appropriate Airport Diagrams, Approach, Departure and Arrival procedures from the NACO site so you can refer to current charts as you listen to the audio and picture the aircraft’s position relative to the airport. As an example, here’s the LiveATC feed and appropriate charts for my local area around Milwaukee:
LiveATC Feed for Milwaukee Area
En Route chart for Milwaukee/SE Wisconsin - so you can see the local VORs and intersections (created using Jeppesen Flight Star).
Milwaukee approach chart PDFs courtesy of NACO digital terminal procedures publication
KMKE Airport Diagram
KMKE ILS 19R
KMKE ILS 1L
KMKE 7R
KMKE VEENA Arrival
Check out the LiveATC transmissions in your area as a great way to keep up to speed with ATC communication procedures and consider making a donation via PayPal if you find their feeds valuable. They also have instructions on how to create your own feed to put your local ATC facility on the air. Other related sites to visit are the online Pilot and Controller Glossary (official list of terms intended for Pilot/controller communications) and the FAA’s Air Traffic Publications site which includes documents such as Order 7110.65R, Air Traffic Control which describes ATC procedures and phraseology from the ATC perspective.
