AV8NLVR's Blog

Here's another cool thing you can do online.  Thanks to the internet and streaming audio technology, you can listen to air traffic controllers from all over America and other parts of the world, live....and for free!

Liveatc.net is a website that hosts live "feeds" from people with a scanner.  The site is run as a volunteer effort, bringing the feeders and listeners together on the web.  The way it works is a feeder has a typical radio scanner that can receive air band frequencies, and connects it to the computer, and the site provides free, open-source software that can stream the audio input.  The site admin would then put it up, with the links to listen to it in one of several ways - in the browser or in whatever application you use on your computer to play mp3s.  They have a full list of the feeds, as well as a list of the ones with the most listeners at the moment.

So what's in a "feed"?  You'll hear whatever that person's scanner picks up on the air band - depending how close to an airport they are located you might hear several types of frequencies.  To the average person it might sound totally foreign so here's a sort of "tutorial" on how to get the most out of it.

The most common categories of frequencies you might hear are ground, which talks to the aircraft moving about the grounds of an airport; tower, which communicates with planes taking off or landing at that airport; approach/departure, which handles aircraft within a certain radius of the airport; and the highest level called center.  There are almost 2 dozen ARTCC (air traffic control centers) around the country, each handling several hundred square miles of airspace.  After planes leave the terminal area radius, they're handed off to the center and can be handed off to different centers as the flight progresses.  Then, when they approach the destination airport's terminal area they're handed off to the approach control.  There isn't a tremendous amount of communication with the center - they normally check in but also frequently report in ride conditions and/or request a different altitude or speed to get a better ride.  Here in northeast Wisconsin, we're near the boundary between the Minneapolis Center and Chicago Center.  There's a feed from the Sawyer Airport in Marquette which picks up Minneapolis Center, but centers are divided up into sectors each with a different frequency so you'll only hear pilots communicating with Minn. Center from around the u.p. area not the entire coverage area of the center.

As far as the oceans, the Oakland Center in Oakland, California handles the entire half of the pacific ocean out to Hawaii.  The Atlantic is different.  Most planes crossing the Atlantic will use one of 6 "tracks" over the northern Atlantic area and there are controllers located in Gander, Newfoundland; Iceland; and Shannon, Ireland.  These frequencies are also on liveatc.net.  The sound quality won't be that great because the planes are transmitting using the HF radio which can handle the great distance.  Normal ATC is transmitted via VHF frequencies.  But on the ocean crossings, pilots are only required to check in every hour or so and they'll state their altitude, speed, and exact location using latitude/longitude.

Next to each of the feeds on liveatc.net it will tell you which frequencies are covered and what type they are.

Probably the biggest thing you'll need to know to make some sense of what you're hearing is the callsign, which you'll hear most often.  Every aircraft has to have a callsign.  For commercial flights it is the airline name plus flight number.  Some airlines use a unique name - the most famous example being "Speedbird" (British Airways).  Others include "Redwood" (Virgin America, because they're headquartered in northern California - home of the giant redwoods); "Citrus" (AirTran, because they're headquartered in Orlando); "Jetlink" (Expressjet - Continental Express); and "Springbok" (South African Airways, a Springbok is an Antelope native to the African plains).  Some jet charter companies have their own unique name - for example, NetJets is "Execjet".  For private planes, the callsign can vary but is usually the aircraft type plus last 3 characters of the registration number.  For example,  if a Cessna Skyhawk had a registration of N123AC it would be called "Skyhawk Three Alpha Charlie".  Be aware that any references to letters will be spoken in the Phonetic Alphabet, which is standard for air traffic control.  Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, and so on....  Military aircraft use a unique callsign for their unit or sometimes, especially for fighter jets, the nickname of the pilot plus two numbers from the plane's serial number.  For example, at the Minneapolis airport they have both an Air Force Reserve and an Air National Guard base on the grounds.  One is called "Gopher" and the other is "Viking".  If you hear a callsign called "Reach", that is a troop transport flight operating on behalf of Air Mobility Command.  I've heard those quite often.

There are tons of live frequencies from all over the world listed on liveatc.net plus there's a page with links to other air traffic control sites.  Also, on the front page of that site they list the newly added feeds and there are new ones coming on quite often.  Most of the big cities in the U.S. and Canada are represented, plus other places like Australia, Dubai, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires (Argentina), Greece, Switzerland....and so on.  All of them are in English, because English is the standard language of air traffic control worldwide but at some of the big airports you'll hear lots of different accents! One place that you will not hear is Britain.  In the U.K. it is illegal to retransmit scanner audio without a valid reason.  This law dates back to World War 2 and there is a movement to change it - someday.

Its pretty easy to get addicted to listening!  With just a mouse click you can hop around the world and listen to what's going on at airports all over!  If you tune into some of the smaller airports you'll hear a lot of private pilots and flight students practicing and some of the big airports like JFK and LAX will be busy 24/7.

Another thing you can do while listening is go to a flight tracking website such as flightaware.com and enter some of the flight numbers you hear.  Especially on the Center frequencies....just because you hear a flight say for example on the Chicago Center feed doesn't mean it is anywhere near or going to Chicago.

Also on liveatc.net you'll find discussion forums where people can post audio clips of interesting communications they've heard - some are funny!

The possibilities are endless for exploring this site!

What do car radios, 8-track tapes, and Learjets have in common?

They were all invented by the same person - Mr. William Lear!  As an American inventor, Lear spent almost all his adult life coming up with new ideas and making them reality.

His first big idea was to create a way that a big vacuum tube radio could be used in an automobile.  He did this back in the late 1920s before the age of 30, back when automobiles were rather simple.  This was tied to the invention of another man, Robert Galvin, who came up with a way to power such a radio from standard current instead of batteries.  Lear sold his patent to Galvin and in 1930 the Galvin brothers introduced the first practical radio for the automobile, which sold for a little over $100.  In honor of this major invention Galvin Manufacturing decided to re-name the company, combining "motor" and "Victrola" to create "Motorola".

In the 1930s, Lear used the profits to start his own company to make electronics for aircraft.  Over the next 30 years, he came up with things like the first autopilot (the "Learmatic Navigator"), first fully automatic landing system that could allow pilots to land in zero visibility, direction finders, and the first radios for aircraft.  In 1962 he sold this business to Siegler and it became known as "Lear-Siegler", a major manufacturer of airplane electronics.

Lear realized the potential for a small jet that would make business travel affordable and started a new company which built the "Learjet" from his design, the world's first mass-produced business jet.  It first flew in 1963 and is still being manufactured today as a division of Bombardier Aerospace in Canada.

The 8-track tape idea came from the need to create a convenient entertainment system for the Learjet that could handle the bumps of air turbulence.  Lear started with the 4-track system which itself was created by another big name in audio, Earl Muntz, and took it to the next level.  The 8-track was immediately successful and by 1965, Ford was offering built-in 8-track players and the first pre-recorded cartridges.  By their peak in the late 70s, 8-track players and cartridges were an $8 Billion per year industry.

Lear had another idea for an even bigger jet which he designed in 1969 and called the "LearStar 600".  In 1976, he sold the exclusive rights to build this plane to the Canadair company, which then named the production version the "CL-600 Challenger".  In 1990 Canadair was sold to Bombardier which still makes the Challenger 600 today - it became another popular business jet.  But Lear's original design for the 600 has yet another legacy.  In the early 90s, Bombardier used the CL-600 as the base design for what they would name the "Canadair Regional Jet".  That's right.  Today's CRJ which is flown by several major airlines (Northwest Airlink, Delta Connection, Skywest, etc) is a direct descendant of Lear's design.  The reason why the windows in a CRJ are somewhat uncomfortably low is because this plane is merely a stretched version of the large business jet and the floor had to be raised to accommodate wiring and other things.

He died in 1978 of Leukemia at the age of 76 after a lifetime of inventing new things which touched nearly everyone's life.  But you know what the real irony is?  William Lear had no formal education beyond the 8th grade.

This year I had the chance to visit the two largest aviation museums in the country.  Both are well worth the price of admission.  The Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum in Washington DC has the largest collection of aircraft in the world, and the Pima Air Museum in Tucson, Arizona is the largest privately-owned air museum in the world.

Although the National Air & Space Museum is actually in Washington DC near the U.S. Capitol, its most popular attraction is about 30 miles away, on the grounds of the Dulles Airport in northern Virginia - the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center annex.  This facility opened in 2003 and was designed to house the much larger artifacts of the NASM.  Since it is located at Dulles, planes that are to be donated can just be flown right in.  Their goal is to eventually  have 900 aircraft on display!

The annex was built with private donations, the largest being $65 million from Steven F. Udvar-Hazy.  He is a Hungarian immigrant and businessman who co-founded the largest aircraft leasing company in the world - ILFC - when he predicted that due to the huge cost of jetliners, airlines would have more flexibility if they leased part or all of their fleets.  The idea paid off well, making Hazy one of the richest men in America, on the same list with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

Admission to the museum is free, but it costs $12 to enter the parking lot.  The facility is basically shaped like a giant hangar with a curved roof and the planes are arranged on the floor and from the roof.  There are elevated walkways on two levels with an unobstructed view from every spot.  There's a second hangar attached to the main one, and this is called the Space Hangar.  Here, the centerpiece is the Space Shuttle Orbiter "Enterprise".  This was the original prototype that was built in the mid 70s and used for landing tests.  Back then, a reusable spacecraft was so new that nobody knew how well it would work so they carried "Enterprise" up to commercial jetliner altitude on the back of a 747 and released it - allowing it to glide to a landing just like the real space shuttle does.

In the main hangar there are exhibits including the Air France Concorde supersonic jet;  the Boeing Dash-80 (707 prototype);  the B-29 bomber "Enola Gay" that dropped the first atomic bomb;  the Virgin GlobalFlyer, in which Steve Fossett made the first non-stop round-the-world flight; the first jet flown by FedEx; and various military jets including an F-14 Tomcat.  Plus there are hundreds more with plans to significantly grow the collection as well as build additions to the main hangar.

This faciilty also has a mock air traffic control tower.  You ride the elevator to the 7th floor and can look out over the Dulles Airport from the same perspective as a real air traffic control tower.

One plane on display here is the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird - the fastest airplane ever built.  Any faster and you'd need a spaceship.  The Blackbird holds both altitude and speed records - and it can photograph a car license plate from 80,000 feet!  The bird thats on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center broke another speed record when it was flown from Palmdale, CA to the Dulles Airport - 68 minutes.  Damn that's fast! 

Meanwhile, 2000 miles to the west lies the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona.  This facility is the largest privately-owned museum of its kind in the world, occupying 80 acres with 250 aircraft.  It is adjacent to the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, home of the 390th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG), affectionately known as "the boneyard".  While the public is not allowed on the base, you can take a bus tour from the museum which gives a look at some of the 4,000 planes they have in there.

Because its in Arizona where rain is not much of a factor, most of the displays are outside.  Its a huge place, meaning lots of walking, and would probably be brutal during the summer in the 100 degree heat.  I was there in the winter just as Wisconsin was digging out from the biggest snowstorm of '07-'08 - it was quite pleasant with temps in the 70s and DRY.  :)

The Pima Museum has mostly military aircraft, many of which aren't at the NASM yet including the B-52 bombers and one of the original presidential transports (Eisenhower's "Air Force One").  Admission for the museum and bus tour of AMARG cost around $20.

I would highly recommend either one or both of these museums as a place to visit if you make Washington or Arizona part of your travels.

I'm really proud to say that one of my photos was published on the cover of a worldwide, large circulation magazine!  My photo of an Air Force F-22 Raptor wason the cover of the August edition of  "Air Forces Monthly",  a magazine devoted to the units and equipment of different countries' air forces around the world.  In this issue they did a cover story on the 192nd Fighter Wing at Langley AFB and the F-22 which coincides with the F-22 Demo Team's first visit overseas to an airshow in England.  This magazine is published by a company based in the U.K. (sold here in the states by Barnes & Noble), and they chose my picture from the hundreds that are online!

I have been taking pictures of aircraft for over 10 years now, and the majority of them (over 5,000 I think) I post on one of two websites - airliners.net and jetphotos.net, as well as my own sites.  From here,  they're seen by people all over the world - and people who need a photo for commercial use or who want prints email me.  I sell them.  It is like a hobby that occasionally pays!  The AFM sale is my 2nd highest amount sale,  just under what I got from "TIME" magazine back in 2002 for 2 photos that were used in a montage.  I have sold pictures to aerospace companies (Raytheon for example) as well as airlines.  Southwest Airlines bought one a couple years ago for which they paid me with one free roundtrip pass that was worth almost $600 at full walk-up fare.  Its definitely fun!  So far in 2008, I have sold more than any other year since I had my first sale in 2002 and more than the last 3 years combined.  I could probably sell more if I knew how to market them better.

The Raptor photo was one that I shot at EAA 2007.  Most of my photos of the last couple years tend to be military and air shows because I happen to live in a place whose airport has very little traffic and not very good spots to photograph from, not to mention the brutal weather for several months of the year:  The Frozen Tundra, Green Bay.  Although at times I do get to travel to places with much more photo-friendly airports.  Through some people I have become acquainted with though my photos I have also had the opportunity to go where few people get to go - behind the scenes, on the ramp at an airport, and also a couple of highly secured aircraft "boneyards".  This all give me a pretty wide variety of interesting shots.

The cover of AFM can be seen under my photos on this blog.  Its a really cool feeling to look at the huge magazine rack at Barnes & Noble with a gazillion different magazines and point to that one and say,  "I shot that".

You may remember a few weeks ago a plane crash in Madrid, Spain in which 154 people died.  The plane crashed while taking off.

Today I was reading a new report that,  while the official cause won't be released for some time, says that the data recorder shows that the wing flaps were not extended in takeoff position,  and an electrical alert system for flaps not set may not have worked.  This reminded me of another crash that was very similar.  It happened in 1987 in Detroit.  I checked some facts on it and indeed,  the Spanair accident appears to be exactly identical to that of Northwest flight 255.

Both aircraft were McDonnell-Douglas MD-82 models.  Northwest 255 was a flight leaving Detroit for Phoenix on an August night in 1987 when the pilots did not do a required pre-flight checklist and did not set the flaps.  That plane only got about 50  feet up,  tipped left then right, then crashed and careened up to a highway overpass in a big fireball.  156 people died (compared to 154 in the Madrid crash) and there was one single survivor - a 4 year old girl whose parents and brother were among the casualties.   Also,  in a striking similarity,  the takeoff warning system in that plane also did not work.

In last month's accident,  the Spanair jet rose slightly from the runway, then crashed and exploded, ending up in the grass.  Many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition; however, 18 people did survive.  But the details of both crashes are so strikingly similar.

Those panels on the rear of the wing that extend out/downward are indeed very important to getting you off the ground - without them, as you can see, well.....you're dead.  The laws of physics are simple and the same no matter what kind or size of plane youi're on.  The wings create the force that causes the plane to go up (lift) by Bernouli's Principle - air moves faster over the top of the wing than under it because the top of the wing is curved and is a larger area.  The slower moving air across the bottom is a higher pressure than the air on top,  so the high pressure bottom causes it to rise.  But factor in that you have a quarter of a million pounds to lift - more lifting force is needed at the beginning so the flaps work by extending the wing - extending the surface area and extending the curvature,  which means even faster air at a lower pressure will produce more high pressure underneath,  enough to get it off the ground and headed upward.   While there are a couple of aircraft types that I've heard of that can do a zero-flaps takeoff,  on most of them the standard wing cannot create enough force to get the plane in the air. - it'll crash every time.

Of course there is more to it....things like speed, angle of attack, etc but the flaps serve the very basic principle.  Its fun to watch a plane sail gracefully off the ground when all the forces work together, whether its a small Cessna or the gargantuan Airbus 380.  They're all the same.  Pilots have checklists for every phase of the flight, and there are operating procedures for just about everything.  The same type of crash caused by human error should never happen twice.

If you live in Green Bay then there is a very good chance that a picture of your house is on the web.  How is that possible, you ask?  You may have heard of google's "street view" feature.

Once upon a time, web search engines put maps online (google, yahoo, mapquest, etc).  Then they took it to the next level by including a layer for a satellite view taken from space - where you can look straight down on any location.  How do you take that to the next level?  How about an actual  street-level, 360 degree interactive photograph?  Welcome to the future.

Google's map site has added a feature called "street view" where you can zoom to any address and see a photograph of the location in which you can pan around to the sides and behind.  They started this in May 2007 with the major cities and are slowly expanding coverage.  I read that their goal is to photograph every single public roadway in the world and put it online.  Now that is a monumental task!

They've already got most major cities in the U.S. done, as well as areas of Japan, most of Australia (released on August 4th), parts of France (released in July), and a small bit of Canada.  Here in Wisconsin, they started out with a big chunk from Grafton down thru Chicago and from the lakeshore over past Madison.  Now, they have added Green Bay!  Sorry, Appleton, you're not added yet.

Just go to the google maps website and zoom to Green Bay.  Click on "street view" and the streets that have photos will appear blue.  Zoom to any address and click the icon,  and you have a pop up window with the photo!

It doesn't say when the photos were taken, but I have a pretty good guess.  Remember last year when the new Claude Allouez bridge in De Pere opened?  October 1, 2007.  They began work almost immediately afterward to dismantle the old bridge next to it.  Well,  if you zoom to Main Av. in De Pere you can see the photo is of the new bridge, and on the west side there is a crane just on the north side of the road.  This is when they were working on the old bridge,  and you can see that the trees are still mostly green.  This means it had to be sometime during the first half of October 2007.

Google's street view is very cool.  There's no set schedule when new cities' pictures are released...it happens every couple months or so.  According to Wikipedia, "google cars" have been spotted taking pictures in Germany, Spain, Italy, UK, and major cities in Canada so that might be a clue what to look for next.    10 years ago, who would have imagined this would be possible?