Author Topic: Feed in Columbus GA? Any interest?  (Read 4237 times)

Offline spudsmac

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Feed in Columbus GA? Any interest?
« on: December 13, 2008, 02:29:11 PM »
I might look into putting a feed in Columbus, GA for KCSG and possibly KLSF (Fort Benning Lawson Army Airfield) if I can receive it.  Is there any interest in these feeds?  I'm in Daytona, but from Columbus, so I would depend on my parent's limited technical knowledge to keep it running.



Offline KSYR-pjr

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Re: Feed in Columbus GA? Any interest?
« Reply #1 on: December 13, 2008, 03:55:28 PM »
Always interested in new feeds.  Don't forget, once you get it up and running you could place a few LiveATC posters around KCSG's flight school(s) and you will soon have a whole army of dedicated listeners who go by the names of "student pilots."  They benefit greatly from local feeds.

As far as remote support, look into the free remote desktop tool offered by LogMeIn.com.  I use this tool myself to support the SYR feed, as I travel away from its location weekly.  Assuming the computer didn't suffer a catastrophic hardware or OS problem, or some ISP-related problem, you can manage most issues that arise via LogMeIn's remote desktop tool.

Also, another good tool to keep the feed healthy is a free System Scheduler that is much more robust than the scheduler delivered in Windows.  You can download it here:  http://www.splinterware.com/download/index.htm

I have my feed computer set up to reboot once every week during the wee hours of Monday.  Not counting occasional power outages and one possible dust issue, my feed has experienced 100% uptime over the last few years, in part I believe due to the occasional reboot schedule.

Offline spudsmac

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Re: Feed in Columbus GA? Any interest?
« Reply #2 on: December 18, 2008, 10:57:43 PM »
and possibly KLSF

I just got home and can pick up ATIS for KLSF in addition to all the KCSG freqs.  Would I want to include both airports in the feed, or just pick one?  Neither one are that busy, the busiest of course is approach and that is only moderately busy.

Offline KSYR-pjr

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Re: Feed in Columbus GA? Any interest?
« Reply #3 on: December 19, 2008, 08:11:17 AM »
The question of how many frequencies to include in a feed always seems to provoke controversy around here.  There are some who want every frequency possible jammed into one feed with the theory that there should be no dead air moments.   The problem I have with this concept is that rarely is it possible to hear more than one transmission from a specific aircraft due to the volume of activity.  In other words, in cases where there is something out of the ordinary happening (and therefore interesting listening for the feed subscribers), from simple things like a pilot or controller going "off-script" to full scale emergencies, the feed most likely will miss most of the action due to the competing, busy frequencies stepping on the action.

In the case of a smaller airport, my opinion is that less is more.  Include approach and tower together so that one aircraft can be followed from takeoff through departure control or in reverse. 

The unscientific proof that less is more can be found in the "captured recordings" section of this site.  My observation is that the more interesting and popular audio clips found in that section came from feeds that were not scanning lots of frequencies. 

With all that stated, perhaps it is prudent to recommend that in this discovery phase you set up your scanner to scan both airports with the intention of seeing if their busier periods step on each other.  If you discover that it is too difficult to follow one aircraft's multiple transmissions due to the other airport's frequencies activity, drop back to the airport that has better reception and more activity.