What originally began as a hobby for Dave Pascoe has grown into a full-fledged business and useful resource for pilots and aviation enthusiasts. LiveATC.net, founded by Dave in 2002, allows anyone to listen in to air traffic communications from around the United States, giving listeners a peek into what might be happening in the sky hundreds or thousands of miles away.
An electrical engineer by trade, Dave earned his pilot certificate in 2001 and then earned his instrument rating a year later. He was also involved in a Virtual Air Traffic Simulation Network (VATSIM) group at the time and thought that members of the group would enjoy listening to actual air traffic communications.
“I was an air traffic controller on VATSIM. We were a pretty serious group, the Boston Center group,” Dave said. “I was also a pilot on that network. As I was going through my instrument training, what happened there was I realized that a lot of people might want to listen to the communications that are going on. I found it not that difficult because I had a ham radio background. … Even though I had a comfort of using a two-way radio because of the experience, I still found it challenging, the ATC lingo. In the beginning, it’s just all gibberish.”
Dave decided to place a couple of receivers at his brother’s house, in range of Boston’s Logan International Airport, and it went from there.
“So we put those up on the internet. I knew how to do internet audio streaming at the time, which wasn’t huge, but certainly was out there in its early phases. I said, ‘Well, I want to share this with my VATSIM group so the other air traffic controllers [in the group] can listen in to how it’s really done.’ To get to the ‘as real as it gets’ thing, I’ll put a website out there, and we’ll just throw a couple streams up. Well, one thing led to another, and here we are today.”
Used by aviation enthusiasts, student pilots, flight simulation enthusiasts, FBO operators, and anyone with an interest in aviation communications, LiveATC has exploded in popularity since it was launched two decades ago. Currently, LiveATC has coverage of radio communications at close to 1,450 distinct airports, and typically there’s a few thousand people listening in at any given time. To cover that many airports, LiveATC relies on a network of volunteers to set up receivers throughout the country.
“Largely for the public network, it’s cooperation of volunteers,” Dave said. “So plane spotters, airplane geeks, flight schools, FBOs, you name it. It runs the gamut. But typically it’s people who have a vested interest in being able to listen to their local airport and to be able to retrieve communications later on from their local airport. It’s an ecosystem where there’s mutual benefit. We get to have a presence there and get the data, and they get to access the data without having to pay a subscription fee.”
During AirVenture, LiveATC listenership receives a significant bump, and Dave has equipment to catch all the action.
“Over the years, I’ve built up a footprint through some friends in Oshkosh of equipment that’s there all year round,” he said. “We have three, and actually this year it’d be four or five different spots where we have receiving equipment. Listening to different channels, not necessarily all of them in each place, but if one happens to go down due to an internet outage or something, we’ve got overlapping coverage so that we’re there all week, and we don’t have to take everything down at the end. We’ll have coverage before the show and during the show with all the additional frequencies and everything. And then after the show, as people depart Oshkosh for the year.”