Journal ·
I figured out the aviation band and now I'm hooked
Turns out pilots are surprisingly chill on the radio, and now I can't stop listening.
Today I finally sat down and actually figured out how to listen to air traffic. I’d seen people online talking about it forever and kept meaning to try, and today was the day.
It took a bit of fiddling with the frequency range and the mode (AM, not FM, which I definitely forgot the first three tries and just heard static and got annoyed), but once it clicked — it clicked. I could hear ground control, I could hear a pilot reading back a clearance, someone asking about wind conditions like it was the most casual thing in the world. Which for them I guess it is.
There’s something really calming about it actually? Everyone’s so businesslike and calm and clear. No drama, no rambling, just short exact phrases and a callback to confirm. Kind of the opposite of how a group chat sounds. I get why people leave a scanner running in the background just for the ambience of it.
Also slightly funny confession: I spent the first ten minutes convinced I was doing something wrong because I expected more radio drama and it was just… very professional people being professional. Which, fair. It’s not a movie.
Now I want a proper antenna for airband specifically instead of just whatever I happened to have hooked up. Adding it to the list, right under “actual transceiver” and “figure out QRZ.RU.”
73 (well, not really applicable here, but still), Iskra