airtraffic

Author Topic: Dont quite understand one thing :(  (Read 6008 times)

Offline Fra

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Dont quite understand one thing :(
« on: April 25, 2006, 12:39:06 AM »
Well, the thing is this.

I'm listening to EHAM a lot and if you see in the info about the feed, you'll see the radio channels about that feed. So I don't understand, there are alot of freqs, is the feed listening to them all? If it is, aren't they get overlaped, or get talk at the same time, and you'll hear only mixing voices?

And one other thing, I was listening to Macedonian Airlines 220 to Zurich (on it's descend) one morning and the controller after bringing it to some level of altitude said MAT 220 contact XXX.XX for arrival good bye. So I got confused, I tought that I should change to the other Zurich feed, but I noticed that that same feed had the arrival also. So I kept listening, and started to hear the other controller from arrival. You know the ussual thing, Good morning zurich arrival, MAT 220 etc..

So my question is, how is this possible? If I hear all the freqs, aren't they get mixed up because of the many airplanes around the zones all the time?

Please help, and don't laugh please, I'm newbie who is putting big effort to learn. :(



Offline michaelt747

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Dont quite understand one thing :(
« Reply #1 on: April 25, 2006, 12:51:35 AM »
I hope i got this right:  these scanners are programmed to listen to several different frequencies--when there is communication between a pilot and controller, the scanner automatically recognizes this and locks onto that frequency and blocks out all the rest.  Sometimes you get lucky, as you did in this case, and the MAT 220 plane was probably one of the only ones on that frequency, so when he switched over the the next frequency, the scanner automatically picked up the chatter and honed in on that frequency and blocked out all the rest.  Once the pilot/controller stop talking, the scanner goes back to scanning all of the programmed frequencies.

I hope this helps,

Mike

Offline JetScan1

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Dont quite understand one thing :(
« Reply #2 on: April 25, 2006, 01:02:54 AM »
>> If it is, aren't they get overlaped, or get talk at the same time, and you'll hear only mixing voices? <<

Yes the Amsterdam feed is scanning all those frequencies at once. And you're right, because it's so busy they all end up overlaping and talking at the same time, blocking each other out. Given how busy it is the radio is scanning too many frequencies. It would be far better if they just concentrated on the Tower frequencies only. IMO. DJ

Offline Kalpazan

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Dont quite understand one thing :(
« Reply #3 on: April 25, 2006, 01:03:16 AM »
Yes, this is exactly how a scanner works. In addition most of them has features like priority scanning and transmission delay. First one tells the scanner which of the programmed frequencies to listen with high priority (scanning them few times at a second) and the second one is telling the scanner to hold the channel for an usual time of 2 secs even if there is no transmission at the moment. That helps against the situation where scanner jumps from one to another frequency very quickly making it impossible for the listener to folllow the communication. Well, sometimes even that does not help if there are many "busy" frequencies programmed.

In addition, an ATC position has few frequencies published where one is primary and the others are backup. Feed is scanning all of them but rarely there is communication going on on each and every published frequency.

Offline Fra

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Dont quite understand one thing :(
« Reply #4 on: April 25, 2006, 07:41:45 PM »
Thanks guys, you've been a great help.

Offline Tomato

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Dont quite understand one thing :(
« Reply #5 on: April 29, 2006, 12:00:13 AM »
I have one question... if you have multiple scanners going - how do you NOT have a collision between them?  Often, say, Tower and Approach would be giving instruction at the same time, but you never hear of overlap on here?  :)