Is there anything better than LiveATC to get accustomed with RT phraseology?
 

I would like to "train my ear" for RT communications and I tried to listen to approach of Dublin's Airport. I simply can't understand more than 50% words because of loud background whistle and poor (quiet) sound quality, although the mp3 player shows 320 kbps. Do they sound just like that in real life too?

Is there anything else with better quality other than LiveATC (apart from personal receiver)? I would like to get accustomed with ICAO phraseology, so US airports will not suit my needs. I also would like to know, is there any way to listen to whole radio communications of any flight №XXXXX (from engines startup to landing) instead of listening to distinct frequencies (ground, tower, approach atc.)

Thanks for taking time to reply!

Hey , the quality is always poor enough even in the aircraft so keep listening out on LiveATC it does help! Try get listening to airports you may going flying to

Your possibly going to get various "warnings" now about eavesdropping on ATC......parts of Europe and certainly the U.K. are tighter on this than the US.

TBH I'm not sure you can train your ear that much by listening, you learn best by doing. I'm not sure if you are training your ear just for hobby purposes or with a view to future training but in any event what does definitely help is knowing the official standard format for calls and basic R/T rules - have you looked at CAP413 (the UK CAA RT handbook) or local equivalent. Link to free download follows.


https://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33...%20MAY16.2.pdf

You are listening to JFK Air Traffic Control

You can get rid of the music in the pane on the left, near the top, just drop the music volume to nil. You can select different feeds in the other pane.

I'm doing the same thing at the moment, and yes, the quality of some of the feeds are really poor. You have to remember the way the system works is some volunteer, some distance from the airport has a police scanner or similar and just plugs that into their computer to upload to liveATC, and the liveATC network shares it about. There's no real standard to it, they just take whatever they can get. Let's be honest the likelihood that there are houses right next to an international airport is pretty low, and then there's the chance that someone willing to upload the streams lives in one of those houses AND has good, unobstructed line of sight? Some are worse than others, but quality will likely always be low to be honest. You often if you look at most listened to, that can indicate the uploader has a good reception.

My choice is VATSIM in conjunction with either FSX on my laptop or x-plane on desktop. I'm still very shaky and forget a lot, but it seems to be good practice! I believe IVAO is basically the same. It's not real ATC of course, it's an online community of amateurs, but most of them take it very seriously from what I've found so far. I know, I know, I'm sure I'll get hounded for it not being like the real thing, blah blah blah, but it's about as close as you're going to get at home.

I started flying on Microlights so when I converted to light aircraft I had to do my radio training pretty quickly. It was definitely something I found tricky but with time it soon became very easy, my instructors advice was "the easiest way to handle it is to know what ATC are going to say" which actually makes a lot of sense.

How many hours do you have? Are you doing the radio on your lessons?

It will come with practice, it's great to listen to online recordings but it becomes far easier when you see it in context, if that makes sense?
It's much easier to understand that a controller is telling you to leave the zone via x not above 2000' VFR on QNH 1012 when you are sitting on the apron, on a clear day with your chart in front of you. I still have little checklists for RT just in case I ever get flustered which to be honest, isn't really necessary as ATC are always very patient and helpful.

Or go the 'old fashioned' route. Buy a VHF receiver, go and sit by an airport and listen. Pick a flight and change frequency with them, so you get practise doing it. it's better doing it this way, as its real ATC rather than simulated, and you have a genuine context for what they are doing, which also helps understanding.

What, listening near an airport? As long as you aren't in a secure area and it's only a receiver, NOT a transceiver/transmitter then I don't see why not. They aren't exactly hard to get hold of and plane spotters have been doing it for a long time. Have the rules changed recently?

I'm willing to stand corrected and I would not like to give out bad advice!

I believe it depends where you are. For example there's never any streams on LiveATC from the UK, when I googled it, it seems it's illegal to listen in to ATC there. By contrast here in Victoria (in Aus, states set their own laws re radio, and never looked into other states) tower frequencies seem to be freely available.

But yeah, unless you want to camp out, you'll likely be getting what's on liveATC anyway lol. Like I say - I recommend VATSim or IVAO for learning and practicing, it really helps understanding liveATC feeds. A trial of pilot edge might be worth it, but I personally didn't think it was worth $20-35 a month - isn't the point of this really not to waste money learning coms whilst you're in the cockpit? ( and actually controllers on vatsim are more forgiving of noobs lol) Make your mistakes with a sim, have the skills for RL