Larch Mountain is also roughly 60 miles away, but it's at an elevation of over 3,800 feet if IIRC. Considering my terrain, that migh be the one I'm picking up.
Control Tower Listening Distance...Hmmmm
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Ubbe
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I envy those kind of conditions. I'm 10 meters above ground and 20 meters above sea level and have a mountain between me and the local airport 25km (15miles) away on the other side of town. I can barely hear the tower mounted transmitter using a yagi beam VHF air antenna at my chimney top.
All non-aircraft related communications are done using a digital Tetra system and when a vehicle are on the runway their talk group are patched to the aircrafts VHF AM frequency, so I can monitor them when the snow plows and litter picking vehicles are out on the field.
Their Tetra system use lower placed antennas and are at UHF but even using the highest gain yagi beam antenna I can find will still not receive that system. I have to park next to the field to monitor that.
/Ubbe
According to the RR Database and the FAA AFF file the 128.300 transmitter at "Larch Mountain" is located at N46.989444 W123.130278, about 10 nautical miles west of Olympia. Looking at that site on Google Earth it does look like the typical ATC RCAG installation. How far are you from this site ? 126.600 is also listed as transmitting from there, can you hear the controller on that frequency as well ? The other "Larch Mountain" (elevation 3480 feet, N45.7157 W122.2959) is about 85 nautical miles to the south of the FAA site. There are antennas there but they don't really look like your typical ATC RCAG installation ?
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Airport Control Towers only control the space usually 5 to 10 miles from the airport and a few thousand feet above the tower. Once you're out of their area, they tell you to contact Departure (TRACON). Usually their radio antennas are mounted on the control tower, or somewhere on the airports property. If the towers line of sight is severely blocked by mountains or something else, they might use a remote transmitter to communicate. They don't need to reach "too far". Usually, if you monitor the tower freq, you'll hear the planes much better (for obvious reasons) rather than the tower unless you're close to the airport.
TRACON Centers control arrivals/departures into airports within their area of responsibility. TRACON will hand the plane off to the airport tower where the plane is landing, or once 5-10 miles out of tower - they'll guide the plane out of the airport their taking off from then hand off to a center once a certain altitude is reached.. TRACON Centers have remote transmitters scattered throughout their coverage area, sometimes on mountain tops, or at the actual airports sometimes.
FAA CENTERS (NY, Boston, Atlanta etc.) handle high altitude. When a plane reaches a cruising altitude, TRACON will tell them to contact whatever Center area their in on a certain freq. Like TRACON, the Centers have remote transmitters all over their coverage area.
Hope this is helpful to understand the different levels of aircraft comms.
TRACON Centers control arrivals/departures into airports within their area of responsibility. TRACON will hand the plane off to the airport tower where the plane is landing, or once 5-10 miles out of tower - they'll guide the plane out of the airport their taking off from then hand off to a center once a certain altitude is reached.. TRACON Centers have remote transmitters scattered throughout their coverage area, sometimes on mountain tops, or at the actual airports sometimes.
FAA CENTERS (NY, Boston, Atlanta etc.) handle high altitude. When a plane reaches a cruising altitude, TRACON will tell them to contact whatever Center area their in on a certain freq. Like TRACON, the Centers have remote transmitters all over their coverage area.
Hope this is helpful to understand the different levels of aircraft comms.
sprman1955
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I can hear Nashville tower which is 16 air miles from me. Some days its stronger than others.
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