Recently I have heard traffic on 134.2000 MHz. It is Atlanta ARTCC, but I don't know the RCAG site. Does anyone know where it is?
How often do they change ARTCC frequencies? And why do they typically get changed?
The 134.20 RCAG site is published on the latest charts as being located in Athens, GA (AHN). It appears to have replaced 124.45 which is no longer listed. This is Sector 16, East Departure, low altitude (11000 to FL230) that works ATL departures eastbound.
Thanks for the heads up, first time I noticed that. If anyone else notices any other ARTCC frequency changes it would be great if they could post them here on the forum.
In my experience of monitoring ATC for almost 35 years I have not seen them get changed very often. Considering all the ARTCC frequencies in North America I'd guess and say maybe only around 1 to 3 are changed per year on average (I'm talking ARTCC Center frequencies only).
I'm not an FAA Tech but I know some have been changed due interference issues and others because they conflict with other frequencies after airspace reorganizations as new frequencies/sectors are added.
The changes are hard to track down because not all frequencies are published on the charts and the FAA can be very slow in updating their ARTCC Facilities Database (AFF) - see link below. NOTAMS are not always published and when they are can only be found under some obscure identifier..
https://nfdc.faa.gov/xwiki/bin/view/NFDC/56DaySub-2016-05-26
In this case the AFF was actually changed to reflect the new 134.20 frequency. Sometimes it seems to take years before they update them, especially high altitude frequencies.
There are also backup frequencies (not published in the AFF) that are used as required in some sectors when the regular frequency/transmitter is down for maintenance or there are interference issues. New York does this quite often rotating backup frequencies through different sectors.
So any reports of changes from listeners always appreciated.
The 134.20 RCAG site is published on the latest charts as being located in Athens, GA (AHN). It appears to have replaced 124.45 which is no longer listed. This is Sector 16, East Departure, low altitude (11000 to FL230) that works ATL departures eastbound.
Thanks for the heads up, first time I noticed that. If anyone else notices any other ARTCC frequency changes it would be great if they could post them here on the forum.
As promised, here they are:
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The USIFR contains useful UHF info, including ZTL ARTCC frequencies.
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Any idea how accurate/up-to-date the Enroute Supplements are, particularly concerning ARTCC freqs? I wonder if they are just copying/pasting from the 56-day AFF files, or if they use other info/sources...?
So I skimmed several audit reports about the FAA and it seems that despite being Federal, they have a long history of operating in a highly decentralized manner, which impairs the ability of HQ management to monitor and report upon the activities of individual facilities.In my experience of monitoring ATC for almost 35 years I have not seen them get changed very often. Considering all the ARTCC frequencies in North America I'd guess and say maybe only around 1 to 3 are changed per year on average (I'm talking ARTCC Center frequencies only).
I'm not an FAA Tech but I know some have been changed due interference issues and others because they conflict with other frequencies after airspace reorganizations as new frequencies/sectors are added.
The changes are hard to track down because not all frequencies are published on the charts and the FAA can be very slow in updating their ARTCC Facilities Database (AFF) - see link below. NOTAMS are not always published and when they are can only be found under some obscure identifier..
https://nfdc.faa.gov/xwiki/bin/view/NFDC/56DaySub-2016-05-26
In this case the AFF was actually changed to reflect the new 134.20 frequency. Sometimes it seems to take years before they update them, especially high altitude frequencies.
There are also backup frequencies (not published in the AFF) that are used as required in some sectors when the regular frequency/transmitter is down for maintenance or there are interference issues. New York does this quite often rotating backup frequencies through different sectors.
So any reports of changes from listeners always appreciated.
Also recently I've focused more on monitoring ARTCC freqs, and I learned some interesting info. listening at late at night. For one, it seems you can get improved reception late at night. Also during night time hours they patch more frequencies together within a single ARTCC, and this allows verification and cross-checking of frequency assignments.
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What Center are you usually monitoring ? Can you hear any controllers ?
I monitor ZDV from the Denver-Metro area.
From what I've heard so far, Pilots rarely, if ever, reference ARTCC sector boundaries over the radio.
I'm familiar with that area, there is really good coverage of ZDV over at LiveATC. I'm working with a ZDV chart dated 5 years ago, there seems to be some discrepancies from whats listed on the RR database, it needs to be updated. It looks like they tweaked a few sector boundaries slightly and renumbered some.
The individual sectors are not published on typical charts, they just show the boundaries between the Centers, so the pilots don't know or need to know them.
ZDV *H*55480 DENVER HIGH 44-57-30.0N 103-10-00.0W /COMMON ZDV-ZLC-ZMP/ TO 12160
ZDV *H*55410 DENVER HIGH 44-42-00.0N 101-29-00.0W TO 12170
ZDV *H*55220 DENVER HIGH 43-42-30.0N 101-24-30.0W TO 12180
ZDV *H*55130 DENVER HIGH 43-17-20.0N 100-06-00.0W TO 12190
ZDV *H*55080 DENVER HIGH 42-00-00.0N 099-01-00.0W TO 12200
I'd be curious to know the meaning of the "FIVE CHARACTER ARTCC BOUNDARY POINT DESIGNATOR", perhaps this might be somehow related to sector numbers.
To some degree I can understand why FAA would not necessarily want to publish this information in widely-available charts; if they frequently patch ARTCC frequencies together the sector boundaries would become meaningless
especially given that (unlike fully repeated LMR systems) they can only patch the controller-side of a frequency, so pilots using different frequencies couldn't hear each other.
How often do they change ARTCC frequencies? And why do they typically get changed?
The very last thing the FAA would do is to change a frequency due to RFI.