Last year saw a whirlwind of activity at LiveATC. We broke the 100 feed barrier for feeds listed on the site. At any given time we have about 80-85 feeds active and we're hoping to get that number over 100 before too long. During the year we added a Top 10 Feeds List which gets updated every minute. This will be expanded soon to show Top 10 in each airport category, hopefully exposing more of the excellent feeds that we have.
We also added a FAQ section to the forums, which helps answer many of the questions that come up so often. We also added a forum which allows listeners to post interesting ATC audio clips and pictures. That has been very popular. If you hear something interesting, save the archived audio clip, edit it, and upload the interesting bits! This is a community supported area...we often don't have the time to do it ourselves, so it's up to you!
In 2005 we also picked up some new bandwidth sponsors. Without them we would not be able to handle the peak load that we sometimes see during interesting events. We can now handle close to 1,500 simultaneous listeners and hope to be able to double that this year.
During 2006 you will see a lot of changes. We'll be switching to an all database-driven web site architecture which will bring a bunch of new features. It will permit our feed metadata to be consistent and updated, for one thing. Eventually feeders will have their own logins and the ability to edit their own entries. More statistics will be shown, like when a feed was last heard from, for example.
I would like to thank many people, but especially Jason H. and Sean P. for their considerable help with LiveATC. We answer numerous questions both in email and on the forums, and it is all time-consuming work. LiveATC would not be possible without their help. I'd also like to thanks Aaron for the MSN-based feed map, another excellent addition in 2005. I also want to thank all the feeders. Without you, there would be no site. It is the large variety of feeds from around the world that make this site interesting to visitors.
Finally, thanks to all the listeners who visit the site. Obviously, this community would not thrive and grow without your interest and support. If you like what you hear, please consider a small donation to the site. Donations go to support some of the server and bandwidth costs and further site growth. Some time early this year we hope to be able to add another server which can be dedicated to archives. Right now we are running short on storage space to hold the growing list of feeds that we'd like to archive. Hopefully some donations will cover the costs of solving that problem.
Here's to another successful year for the LiveATC community.
Thanks,
Dave Pascoe
LiveATC.net Founder
