Good ATC Radio Communication Exposure

As shared in my last post, last weekend was my first flying experience piloting a plane into a towered airport! A huge difference is the two way communication. This takes listening, understanding, reading back key information to the tower/ground, and complying with instructions. 

Most of my training has been untowered. In those cases, you are listening to radio, but your communications are largely talking. By that, I mean I'm typically radioing who I am, where I'm at, and what I'm doing. It does not involve a lot of two way communication. 

I'm always looking for ways to learn more. One thing I wanted to share that I'm doing to train my ears and gain more exposure to two way communication is listening to live ATC. Love that you can download an app and listen in. These two way radio communications can be quite a verbal buffet. A useful tool I find helpful to gain exposure to real live two way communication examples to decipher what is being covered. 

Live ATC app is downloadable from iTunes. I think it was a few bucks. It's handy having it on my iphone.

Top 50 channels list. I did a search by state. There were only a few Virginia channels. Norfolk was not very clear. KJFK is nice and clear!