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Virtual Tower Guide

So, what is all this?  You are listening (or should be) to air traffic controllers at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. The live feed you hear is from a scanner located near the airport, so rather than hearing just one frequencies, you are actually hearing quite a number of different frequencies and ATC services.  You will hear aircraft and controllers engaged in a variety of activities such as DFW Ground Control, DFW Clearance Delivery, DFW Tower, DFW Approach, and DFW Departure.  The scanner jumps to whatever frequency is busy at the moment, so you never know what or whom you will hear next.  (For more on frequencies and services see below.)

This framed web page is designed to present you with a vast amount of information relevant to airport operations and commercial aircraft in a coherent fashion that mimics that of an airport control tower.  I think that his increases the recreational and educational possibilities of the DFW ATC live feed.

Screen setup: At the center is a diagram of DFW showing all operational runways and taxiways with their designations in a style much like that of a control tower ASDE (Airport Surface Detection Equipment) -- a radar display that shows the position of aircraft on the ground.  On the left of the screen are two "control panels."  The top panel controls what you see in upper right hand window display while the lower control panel controls what you see in the lower window display.  To change the displays, click the appropriate control toggle switch: 

Views available with upper control panel:

Doppler Radar -- Radar image of precipitation in DFW area.
Weather View -- Live camera view from downtown Dallas.
Airport Photo -- Photo of DFW airport from the air. (matches airport diagram).
Approach Plate -- Sample aircraft approach procedure for DFW.
Flow Control -- Diagram of how aircraft arrive and depart DFW--complicated, no?.
Aircraft Guide -- An album of small photos of and links for commercial aircraft.

DFW Charts and Views -- Sample approach charts as well as photos of the airport and ATC operations.
Surface Weather -- Weather reports from DFW including temperature and wind direction and speed.
Flight Tracking -- Look up real-time information on a particular flight.
DFW ATC Info -- Home page for all the people you are listening to.
Virtual Tower Guide -- This guide.
Airline Callsigns -- Callsigns sometimes don't sound like the airline names.
Acknowledgements -- Links to all of special people and organizations that made this site possible.

Or maybe it sounds like controllers are having a difficult time getting all the flights out.  Maybe it's the weather.  Switch on the doppler radar image--perhaps there is a thunderstorm nearby.  Or perhaps the winds have picked up and changed direction:  Switch on the Surface Weather report and find out.

Listen for Ground Control/Tower commands and examine the airport diagram to figure out how they are orchestrating the movements of hundreds of aircraft and thousands of people!

ATC Frequencies and Services: When listening to the live feed, you can know what service you are listening to only by understanding what it is that they are saying.  Sometimes you will hear one frequency for several minutes, other times the scanner will switch between several frequencies very quickly.  When you are lucky, the frequencies scanned might be in the right order to hear an aircraft get clearance for the flight from clearance delivery, taxiing commands from ground control, runway and takeoff commands from the tower, and flight vectors from departure.
 
 

If you hear something like this:   "Expect flight level 34, squawk 3457."  "Proceed to runway 36 Right via taxiways Golf and Whiskey Kilo."  "Winds 21 at 15, cleared for takeoff runway 36 Left."  "Climb and maintain 5000, turn left to 300."  "Descend and maintain 3000, intercept localizer for runway 35 Center."

You are probably hearing:  Clearance Delivery  Ground Control  Control Tower  Departure  Approach

   Email Tom Heaney