Pilot Mike’s Weblog

The July 11 edition of AOPA ePilot had an article indicating that AOPA was able to obtain the radar data and voice communications of a March 21st incident involving an F-16 pilot flying in close formation with the pilots of a Pilatus PC-12 and a Beechcraft Premier jet.

The GA aircraft were flying through an active military operations area (MOA); however, center controllers had no method to communicate with military controllers in real time.

Besides the fact that this F-16 pilot did something completely dangerous, there is a major opportunity for improvement in ATC communications here. Is anyone else surprised that the ARTCC was not able to talk directly to controllers for these military aircraft?!? I fully support AOPA’s recommendation for the FAA to develop a method for center controllers to communicate with military controllers in real time.

Take a look at the video as the radar echos show on up on top of each other. The radio traffic playing while the radar echos paint will send chills down your back!

Be safe out there folks!

I am throwing around the idea of including some type of audio stream of local ATC radio traffic on this site and I would like to gage the interest level. My home is very close to Johnson County Executive Airport (KOJC) and I have good reception of the Kansas City TRACON transmitter for the south side (118.9 MHz). Would streaming audio of local ATC traffic be of interest to any readers here?

Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment, or sending me an email from the About Me tab at the top of the page.

Update 03-29-2008: I got a couple of emails and a comment posted that there was some interest. Without much work, I am now providing the feeder site for KOJC at LiveATC.net. The guys there are doing the final checkout on the stream before it gets listed, but if you want a preview, here is the link.

This week I flew commercial to San Jose for a trip to Cisco Headquarters for business and I had the opportunity to listen in to the flight deck on my flights out. Some airlines patch the ATC radio traffic into one of the audio channels at the seats which I think is awesome except for when the flight attendants cut into the feed for their announcements.

Discover what mistakes I observed on this commercial flight after the jump.

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