I have made a couple of changes to the Syracuse, NY, feed. First, I removed Emergency/Guard (121.50) because that frequency often had interference (not voice activity) that negatively impacted the feed.
Secondly, I added Ground to the list of scanned frequencies. As I am about 12 nm away from the airport with a ridge in between the feed antenna and the transmitting towers, I have noticed that the feed will still receive about 70% of the ground-based aircraft, including all of the larger airliners.
These days, with constant heavy snow there as been a lot of activity on ground complaining of snow banks interfering with wingtips and engine nacelles. There also has been a lot of "lost" aircraft while taxiing, as the visibility has been 1/4 mile or less (RVR 1800 or lower), taxiways covered in freshly fallen snow, and taxiway signs covered in blowing snow.
While the feed already uses an outdoor antenna with a nicely shielded RG8 antenna cable, my plan is to upgrade the antenna to see if that improves reception of the ground-based aircraft. That won't happen until April or May, whenever this snow melts.
Hey, JD, if you read this: You friend who started at Syracuse a few years ago is one smooth controller now. You should have heard him yesterday working both tower and ground (a common requirement at Syracuse). Visibility from the tower was nil, aircraft were taxiing all over the place, and lots of vehicles darting around the taxiways and runways attempting to stay on top of the falling snow. Your friend there was doing an excellent job handling all of that activity from the tower, but I'll bet he was quite relieved at position change time to go back to working
just Approach.
