I was listening to live ATC broadcast this evening for O’Hare ground control.
Jesus tapdancing Christ, no idea how they do it.
All you hear is a steady stream of instructions like “j1234, approach 10L and hold, then sierra sierra golf tango tango alpha” which are “directions” for pilots to taxi to a gate.
They are ripping them off at hyperspeed, no mistakes. The audio quality of some pilots is just terrible but somehow they know wtf they said. They have dozens of planes on the ground at a time, organizing the chaos of them all without blinking. In the hour I listened, I heard one dude doing it all, though I think there are two different ground controllers.
Planes blocking taxiways, pilots misunderstanding instructions, someone is taking too long to push back from the gate and they’re making changes and adapting on the fly.
This touches on an interesting point: relying solely on radio for route instructions is archaic and we desperately need to overhaul it with a digital alternative. Why can’t we take some of that budget to modernize ATC?
The audio quality of some pilots is just terrible but somehow they know wtf they said.
That is in my experience highly dependent on what kind of radio/antenna is used to record the live broadcast, it’s orientation and it’s location.
I have an Icom IC-R6 radio scanner, even at the airport with line of sight of the infrastructure you can still get a terrible reception if the angle of the radio is wrong, the antenna is wrong or you have parked in the wrong spot.
I was listening to live ATC broadcast this evening for O’Hare ground control.
Jesus tapdancing Christ, no idea how they do it.
All you hear is a steady stream of instructions like “j1234, approach 10L and hold, then sierra sierra golf tango tango alpha” which are “directions” for pilots to taxi to a gate.
They are ripping them off at hyperspeed, no mistakes. The audio quality of some pilots is just terrible but somehow they know wtf they said. They have dozens of planes on the ground at a time, organizing the chaos of them all without blinking. In the hour I listened, I heard one dude doing it all, though I think there are two different ground controllers.
Planes blocking taxiways, pilots misunderstanding instructions, someone is taking too long to push back from the gate and they’re making changes and adapting on the fly.
Holy shit y’all.
Listen for yourself and try to figure it out. Audio: https://www.liveatc.net/play/kord1n2_gnd_in.pls Ground mapd: https://www.flightaware.com/resources/airport/ORD/APD/AIRPORT+DIAGRAM/pdf
Good luck.
This touches on an interesting point: relying solely on radio for route instructions is archaic and we desperately need to overhaul it with a digital alternative. Why can’t we take some of that budget to modernize ATC?
That is in my experience highly dependent on what kind of radio/antenna is used to record the live broadcast, it’s orientation and it’s location.
I have an Icom IC-R6 radio scanner, even at the airport with line of sight of the infrastructure you can still get a terrible reception if the angle of the radio is wrong, the antenna is wrong or you have parked in the wrong spot.