ONE of the challenges for new students is to get to grips with radio communications. This is especially important for my students as we conduct our lessons based at CYTZ, a busy controlled airport. Talking to Ground and Tower air traffic controllers to get permission to taxi, takeoff and land is an integral part of the learning experience, but one which most new students find quite intimidating. Nobody wants to sound like a idiot on the radio and it’s hard to know what to say at the start, especially when everyone else sounds so … proficient.

I have various tools to help with this hurdle. On this website, my students have access to transcriptions and broken-up recordings of each element of aircraft-to-ATC communications for a typical training flight that they can listen to between lessons. There are recordings of the ATIS weather information with the details written out. And of course each flight is recorded in both audio and video so they can listen back to the ATC communications of each lesson, in review.

Now I’ve added another learning tool: I’ve arranged for the ATC tower frequency (118.2Mhz) to be captured and streamed over the internet. So in between lessons students can play the audio live and get used to the rhythm and cadence of aircraft talking to ATC. There are also recordings of the previous day’s radio (with the gaps removed) for concentrated listening practice. This is similar to what’s available on the website liveATC.net except if you look for the CYTZ feed there you’ll find it only captures aircraft in the air and not the ATC end of each conversation. (I have offered a feed of the rather better reception I’ve arranged to liveATC (so everyone else can benefit too) and I’ll update this page if I get a response.)

Meanwhile, my students will find the Tower audio and recordings at this page.

As an additional bonus, you can also listen live to the ATIS weather broadcast on the same page.

UPDATE:

LiveATC.net is now carrying our feed from the CYTZ tower – you can find it on this page: https://www.liveatc.net/search/?icao=CYTZ