DON'T use FS2004 to learn R/T unless you take it with not a few grains, but buckets full of salt. FS2004 is (a) an American product, using US conventions ("position and hold" instead of "line up and wait" come to mind. Conditional landing clearances is another: "You are number three behind a Warrior on final and a Cessna on base. Cleared to land.") and (b) heavily dumbed down. You will never be refused a transit in FS2004, for instance. There's no other airspace than B and G. Nobody does circuit calls, everybody does IFR style direct approaches. Nobody says Hello, Good Morning, Thank you, Bye Bye. And so forth.
Best advise is above: buy a scanner and listen to actual R/T from an airfield near you. And not just casually listen, but get a piece of paper out and try to write down calls signs, circuit positions and see if you can anticipate the position reports, answers from ATC and so forth. Bonus points for all the errors that you identify!
I got a second-hand scanner for 40 euros. Best investment I ever made during my course.
And what I also did was rig up my own antenna in the attic. All you need is a bunch of RG-58 coax cable. This cable used to be used for "thin ethernet" so if you go to any place which has an IT department you can probably get miles of that stuff for free from them, if they haven't thrown it away, that is. Take the connector off one end. Then either separate the inner core from the mantle over a distance of about 50 centimeters (I don't remember the exact length, but you need a quarter wavelength of the frequency that's in the middle of the band you're trying to listen to), or use two lengths of regular household electricity copper wire (quarter wavelength again) and attach this to the core and the outer shield, respectively. Make sure the ends extend outwards from each other: the BNC cable attaches in the middle to form a T. Mount this somewhere high up, vertically (horizontal if you want to receive NAV signals, which you probably won't.) Makes a far better antenna than the tiny whip that comes with the scanner!
Last edited by BackPacker; 23rd February 2007 at 15:51.
Reason: More rant on FS2004 R/T