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Comment by aaronmdjones | Hacker News Reader

It sounds a lot better in the tower and cockpit. Much better receiving equipment, much closer proximity. The tower doesn't broadcast at high power because it doesn't need to. These ATC recordings are only available for us to listen to because someone volunteered to record and upload them; that someone probably doesn't live in the airport.

That said I still made out Delta 29 Heavy just fine. Maybe it's years of listening to these recordings.

Edit: Notice how the plane inbound and 4 miles out sounded a lot better? They were probably a lot closer to the person recording. That's how it should sound.

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> It sounds a lot better in the tower and cockpit. Much better receiving equipment, much closer proximity. The tower doesn't broadcast at high power because it doesn't need to. These ATC recordings are only available for us to listen to because someone volunteered to record and upload them; that someone probably doesn't live in the airport.

This is the main reason, but it's important to note (as others have) that you simply get used to imperfect radio signals - go listen to the VATSIM community, and even some of those can be relatively difficult for a layman to parse. But you quickly get used to it, and it becomes second-nature to pull out the relevant bits of a callout without much thinking, based on what calls you expect at any given point in the takeoff/landing/flight

I was flying into Atlanta international when thousands of planes were relocating from Florida to avoid a hurricane (ie so planes parked on the ground don't get damaged).

I believe at the time it was the busiest day for an airport in history.

That's when it finally made sense to me why they talk that way. Sometimes they need to

Oshkosh the day before Airventure starts is fun to watch and listen. They paint colored dots on the runway so they can leapfrog other planes on the runway. There are special rules in place instructing pilots to not talk back unless requested to do so or it is really needed. They acknowledge transmission by rocking their wings. I have seen 5 planes touch down on two parallel runways within a few seconds.

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