Aircraft listening

[DHDaniel]

I'll really enjoy listening to aircraft. I have my old Pro 2006 setup and it does great.
My question are about the actual talk.
Alot of the lingo can be figured out, I am familiar with the phonetic alphabet. When the aircraft responds to the tower they always
say something like this: United 2100 with you we have information Sierra, or Romeo. What does this mean? IS it something to do with
the ATIS? The freq's I monitor are Houston approachs and Towers. I rarely get the tower unless I go mobile near the airport. I get flights going into IAH and Houston Hobby.

fun stuff

Dave

 

[Bill28227]

Airports have a continually broadcasted weather report. They name each boadcast a alpha name. In your case United 2100 is saying they heard weather report Sierra so the tower knows it is the current report.

 

[Randyk4661]

Watch this this should help with questions.

 

[vagrant]

DHDaniel, your guess is spot on. In addition to the weather, the ATIS report conveys information that may be going on with a particular runway, taxi, approach, clearance and delivery frequencies etc. When you are near the Houston airport you may want to dial up 124.050 MHz AM. You will hear the current ATIS report which updates hourly. You might even hear it at your residence 25 miles away, but much depends on your antenna and system at home. ATIS uses a low power transmitter that is heard fine by aircraft in the sky where it is needed.

By the way, the phonetic name updates hourly as well, so you will hear Romeo, then Sierra, Tango, Uniform, etc. progressively.

 

[AirScan]

If you can't hear it from your location you can get the KIAH ATIS here - LiveATC KIAH ATIS

 

[nd5y]

My question are about the actual talk.

Download the Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM) and Pilot/Controller Glossary

Air Traffic Plans and Publications

www.faa.gov

and
FAA Order JO 7340.2K - Contractions

JO 7340.2K - Contractions – Document Information

www.faa.gov

 

[WB9YBM]

Airports have a continually broadcasted weather report. They name each broadcast a alpha name. In your case United 2100 is saying they heard weather report Sierra so the tower knows it is the current report.

...and they're assigned sequentially. For example if an aircraft says they have weather report "sierra" but the weather report was updated to the next letter in line ("Tango" in this case), I've heard the tower tell the aircraft to check for the update...

 

[majoco]

Vagrant says:

You will hear the current ATIS report which updates hourly.

Does it? I listen quite often to find the QNH to set barometers and the ATIS seems to update whenever there is a significant change in any of the parameters - quite often in fine weather we are still using Charlie in the morning after starting at Alfa at midnight!

 

[majoco]

I've just had a look at some Google replies to "pilots jargon" but most of them were not anything like you would hear on the radio, escpecially if you are just listening to the ground controller and the tower. One I often hear here is "cancel the SID and proceed direct to APITI" which is quite a popular route. So a SID is a Standard Instrument Departure which tells the pilot what compass heading or radio beacon radial to fly if the weather was bad and the visiblity was poor - he'd be flying on instruments - the chart he would be using shows the bearings, courses and altitudes to fly. But if the weather was good he could be told to cancel the SID and fly to "APITI". Apiti is a village about 20 miles from our airport and its position is plotted on a larger chart and gives it's distance and bearing from the local VOR - VHF omni-range - a beacon that gives distances and bearings from itself. By now the tower controller has handed over control to the area controller who may or often is not be on the departing airport or some long distance away. The tower will say "passing 5 thousand feet call Ohakea Control on 122 decimal 3" and the pilot will say "122 decimal 3 thanks" just so Ohakea know he's got the frequency right - nothing worse than losing contact and have some aircraft wandering about uncommanded!
Anyway - keep listening, you'll soon get the hang of it! Here's a snippet of the big chart showing my local airport - Palmerston North - and the airforce station at Ohakea where the high level controller sits and the little village of Apiti north of PMR on radial 003 from the VOR.

 

[n6hgg]

APITI is also a designated intersection identifier of two Vortec radials defining a position for an instrument approach fix which you said already. All intersection position identifiers use use five-letter designators. That's why the identifiers are very strange sounding names. The five letter format make the intersections easy to see on an IFR chart when you are busy in the cockpit on an IFR approach.

 

[alcahuete]

Vagrant says:

Does it? I listen quite often to find the QNH to set barometers and the ATIS seems to update whenever there is a significant change in any of the parameters - quite often in fine weather we are still using Charlie in the morning after starting at Alfa at midnight!

No clue about New Zealand, but in the US:

Maintain an ATIS message that reflects the most current arrival and departure information.

a. Make a new recording when any of the following occur:

1. Upon receipt of any new official weather regardless of whether there is or is not a change in values.

2. When runway braking action reports are received that indicate runway braking is worse than that which is included in the current ATIS broadcast.

3. When there is a change in any other pertinent data, such as runway change, instrument approach in use, new or canceled NOTAMs/PIREPs update, etc.



The METAR generally posts between 53 and 00 every hour, so you can expect an ATIS change every hour, at the least. We also don't start with Alpha at midnight. It just keeps running in order, assuming 24/7 ops.

 

[majoco]

Not so long ago the waypoints didn't have five-letter names that were slightly pronounceable, they took their names from whatever the local point was called. There was a holding pattern to the north of Wellington that, although spoken easily enough for us locals, was totally unmanageable to the Qantas guys - it's name was 'Pauatahanui'. Fortunately the new waypoint is called 'witby' and the holding pattern has been moved further up the coast!
We don't have many Vortacs in NZ - mainly only on the Military bases - everywhere else it's just VOR/DME.