I was sitting around this morning, staring at my iPhone and thinking how far ahead of the pack it was in just about every category compared to all the other smart phones I’ve had- Believe me when I say I’ve had many. What’s great is that the functionality of the iPhone just keeps increasing, since Apple started allowing software folks to write programs for it.

Then something occurred to me- Wouldn’t it be cool if there was an app that streamed live ATC! What better then to sit at Starbucks or the airport and listen to the tower… on your iPhone, no less? So, I immediately found myself at Apple’s Application Store searching for just this very app… “It had to exist” I told myself. But unfortunately, it does not exist… at least not yet.

Never being one to give up easily though, Google seemed like the next logical place, so that’s where I went. I found that the folks over at LiveATC.Net had addressed this in some forum posts and have indicated that they might even be writing their own app. Reading further I found that there is a program folks are using which, although not solely devoted to streaming live ATC, definitely does the trick. It’s Nullriver’s Tuner Internet Radio and is $5.99 at the iTunes application store. The good news is that you don’t have to ‘jailbreak‘ your iPhone, while the bad news is that you’re going to have to fork over the six bucks, but it’s worth it, because not only are you going to be able to listen to live ATC, you’re also going to be open to literally hundreds if not thousands of live radio feeds from around the world to go with it. I should mention that there is a free application called FStream but being a firm believer in paying for what you get, well, you get the point. Anyhow, this post will be about using Tuner Internet Radio to listen to live ATC.

The first step is to go to the iTunes application store on either your iPhone/iPod Touch (yes it will work on either one) or you computer and purchase Tuner Internet Radio. A quick search should turn it up. Once you’ve got it loaded onto your iPhone/iPod Touch, do the following:

1. Go to http://www.LiveATC.Net on your computer.
2. On the left side you’ll see a menu, select ‘LiveATC Audio Feeds’
3. Select the geographical location that has the particular airport you’d like to listen to
4. Choose between the available listening options, green means the stream is up, red means it’s down
5. Press the Tuner icon on your iPhone/iPod Touch to launch the application
6. Press Search in the lower right corner of the application
7. Press Open in the upper left corner of the application
8. Type the name of the frequency you selected at LiveATC.Net
9. Press Next at the lower right hand corner of the application
10. Type the address of the stream, in this case we’ll use Boston Tower: http://alt.liveatc.net/kbos_twr
    
11. Press Done at the lower right hand corner of the application
12. The application will load a new window with the stream in it, Metar and all.
13. Press the open book (Bookmark) at the upper right hand corner of the application
14. Click Add to Bookmarks
15. Repeat for every frequency you like
16. Organize your bookmarks

A quick note about bandwidth: I have not verified this yet but reports are that the app will stream fine with an Edge connection, at the very least.

When the official live streaming ATC application from LiveATC.Net comes out I plan on purchasing that, as it will be solely dedicated to live ATC streams (and I’d like to support LiveATC.Net for even making this possible). Until then, this method is great. I’ve provided some accompanying pictures below.

Enjoy
Capt’n Chris

Links:

• LiveATC.Net - Features LiveATC streams from all over the world
• Tuner Internet Radio - Launches the iTunes Application Store

Filed under: iPhone | |