by Whiskey_Zulu » Fri May 23, 2003 6:00 am
I think the background ATC controller noise in the game is fairly realistic. One nice touch I really like. It might be a little louder than real life, but not very much, and I can't imagine how it would interfere with hearing the controller you are listening too.
What's really funny in real life is when somebody is laughing really loud or just saying something weird in the background. It's even better when it happens when a controller cuts ATIS and for whatever reason doesn't feel like cutting it again, and whatever 100-decible belly laugh or inance remark is repeated over and over for an hour.
Speaking of not hearing things. There was this controller at Daytona Beach, FL, who was a real joker. One day I took a tower tour, and he was down in the bottom working approach. He asked an aircraft to say speed and direction, then sorta pulled off his headset so we could hear it. It wasn't very loud, so he asked the pilot to repeat speed and heading. Then he did it a third time to make sure those of us on the tour heard it. Afterwords he said, "anybody know that guy?" (we and the pilot he was talking to were all from a big flight school at Daytona). "Tell him I was just kidding." When we walked up to the top where the ground and tower controllers were, they showed us the light gun, then showed us an isolated spot on the edge of the airport property where people like to park and make out. "We like to blast 'em with the red light when they really start going at it," they told us.