The Chatter project is about collecting and refining recordings from LiveATC.net for use in a chatter playback plugin for X-Plane, FSX, FSX Steam Edition, P3D V1 – V5, MSFS 2020, or for use in ATC programs that support chatter playback such as Pilot2ATC. Stick and Rudder Studios has a licensing agreement with LiveATC.net that allows us to collect and edit clips from their archives. These clips can then be offered under license for use as ATC chatter playback in flight simulators.

The goal is to organize and classify these clips by the geographic region that they originated from as well as the type of controller the communication was with, i.e. tower, ground, clearance, approach, departure, center. The playback plugin or Pilot2ATC can then play these clips based on the ATC facility your com radio is tuned to.

What is Involved in Creating the Clips

The recording archives from LiveATC.net need to be edited with Audacity to create high quality audio clips that represent a single exchange between ATC and the pilot. As an example, “United 6626, Tower, winds 240 at 7, cleared for takeoff runway 24 right” – “Cleared for takeoff runway 24 right, United 6626”. Here is an example clip:

Often these clips will have very specific location identifiers in them. As an example you might hear “United 6626, Boston Tower, cleared for landing runway 4 right”. The clip will need to edited with Audacity to remove the word Boston so the resulting clip reads as “United 6626, Tower, cleared for landing runway 4 right”. The reason we need to do this is so that clips from a general region of the world can be used for a controller at any airport and still maintain a reasonable degree of immersion.

It is also important when editing the archives to select only reasonable quality clips. Some static is ok but too much can detract from the immersion during playback. In some cases a section of the audio may need to be boosted in gain so that the pilot exchange can be heard clearly.

The goal is to get 1,000 to 2,000 clips per controller per region. The large number, combined with playback logic that can randomize the starting clip, will reduce the chances that you will hear the same clips during a flight in the simulator.

Why do we Need Volunteers

We would like to keep the cost for the plugins and clips low, $15 USD. It is a bit tedious to create these clips. Once you get good at using Audacity you can create roughly 1-2 clips per minute. It can take thousands of person hours to create a large number of high quality clips. By using volunteers we can decrease the time it takes to get a larger number of high quality clips.

What is Involved to Become a Volunteer

You would need to install and become familiar with Audacity. You will also need to get a free Google account and become familiar with Google Drive. We will be using Google Drive to allow you to get access to the samples and as a place for you to submit your final recordings. You would also need to provide me with the email address that is associated with your Google Drive account so I can grant you access to the samples and submission folders.

Once you have submitted a minimum of 100 high quality clips that are accepted for inclusion we will give you free access to the entire collection for your personal use and we will give you a free license to the playback plugins and free updates of the plugins and future clips through June of 2025. See the Reward System paragraph below for more detail.

The collection currently contains approximately 49,000 total chatter files.

The reason we have a date limit on this offer is that our license with LiveATC.net needs to be renegotiated in 2021 and any new agreement might impact the price and future distributions of the clips and plugin. You will not be allowed to redistribute or post the collection, they will be for your personal use on your personal flight simulator.

As a volunteer you need to agree that your submitted clips become the property of Stick and Rudder Studios and via the license agreement, LiveATC.net, and you will not have the right to redistribute them in any way as they are copyrighted by LiveATC.net and Stick and Rudder Studios, LLC.

Reward System

We want to reward those volunteers that contribute to the collection. If you just have the demo and you decide to participate in the program we will give you a free license to X-ATC-Chatter or FS-ATC-Chatter when we accept your first 100 clips that you submit. If you have already submitted your first 100 and have a license or if you purchased X-ATC-Chatter or FS-ATC-Chatter and want to continue to help us expand the collection we will give you a $15 USD gift certificate to either the X-Plane.org store or the FlightSim.com store. for every 150 clips you submit.

There are a few rules on this.

  • Give me a heads-up that you plan to work on some submissions by sending an email to Mark@StickandRudderStudios.com.
  • Make sure you follow the best practices below.
  • Submit a few clips for my review before you go crazy creating a lot of clips. I want to keep the quality high so I would hate to have to tell you I can’t accept a bunch of clips you did due to collection errors.
  • Don’t create more than 150 at a time. I need to spot check your work so very larger submissions in one shot are harder to handle. I also prefer to process the gift certificates in $15 increments.

I Want to Participate

  • Get a free Google Account and become familiar with Google Drive. https://www.google.com/drive/
  • Select a three letter prefix for your clips. You will put the three letter prefix as the first three letters on all the clips you make. This helps us keep your clip filenames different from other submissions. Consider using your initials for the three letter prefix but any three letters will do.
  • Send an email to Mark@StickandRudderStudios.com and let me know what email address is associated with your Google Drive account and what three letter prefix you have selected. I will verify that the three letter prefix is not already taken by any existing volunteer. I will also grant you access to the chatter samples folder and submission folder on Google Drive.
  • Download and install Audacity: http://www.audacityteam.org/home/
  • Download and install the Lame MP3 encoder plugin for Audacity: http://www.audacityteam.org/download/windows/

Watch this YouTube tutorial on how to collect, edit, and submit the files:

Directory Structure

Regions

These are pretty self explanatory and they match the U.S. and International feed index on https://www.liveatc.net/feedindex.php. One difference is that we have collapsed South America, Central America, and Mexico into South America. Under each region will be a Controllers directory followed by a directory for each controller type.

Controller Directories

It is important that you listen carefully to the clip you are editing and make sure you export it to the proper directory. In some cases the LiveATC feed from a facility may very well support multiple ATC services, such as Ground / Clearance and Departure / Approach. The samples directory on Google Drive has a complete set of samples for each controller type. The following sections detail what should go in each directory.

Clr

The Clr directory is for flight plan clearance requests and transmissions.

Dep Gnd and Dest Gnd

These directories should contain ground transmissions for push-back and Taxi instructions. The main reason for having two directories is to try and keep the voices different between the two so during a flight you will hear different ATC voices between your departure airport and your destination airport

Dep Twr and Dest Twr

These directories should contain tower transmissions for line-up, take-off clearance, and landing clearance. The main reason for having two directories is to try and keep the voices different between the two so during a flight you will hear different ATC voices between your departure airport and your destination airport

Dep

The Dep directory is for ATC departure transmissions. This is the ATC service that guides the flight from the tower to an en-route center control after takeoff.

Ctr

The Ctr directory is for en-route center transmissions. This ATC service handles flights from Departure to Approach and makes sure aircraft maintain safe separation.

 App

The app directory is for ATC approach transmissions. This is the ATC service that guides the flight from en-route center control to the tower for landing.

Dep Uni and Dest Uni

These two directories contain transmissions between pilots at non-towered airports. The pilots announce their intentions for take-off, landing, and report their locations in the pattern so other pilots can hear and know what they are doing. The reason for two directories is so you can make sure that you have different voices in each so you hear a difference during a flight between your departure and destination airport.

Languages

For the time being please just collect English clips. I’m looking into how we will identify clips with different languages and once we have a solid collection of English clips we can consider adding others.

Best Practices

  • If you are new to the project:
    • Listen to the files in the samples folder. They will give you a good feel for what we are looking for
    • try to create a few clips for each controller type and then submit them following the instructions in the “Submitting Your Files” section below. Send an email to Mark@StickandRudderStudios.com and I’ll check what you have done and give you feedback. It is best to make sure you are doing things right before spending time on a lot files only to find out that you made some mistakes.
  • Each clip should have one ATC / Pilot exchange. If there are multiple exchanges about the same topic and between the same controller and aircraft it is OK to keep them in the one clip. Don’t pile exchanges between different flights and ATC into the same file.
  • Try to pick recordings that do not have too much static.
  • Edit out any glaring location specific information. If the controller is speaking so quickly that you can’t easily see where the section of audio is that has the location data move on to a clip that won’t be so difficult to edit. Examples:
    • Change “Norcal Approach” to “Approach”
    • Change “Boston Tower” to “Tower”
    • Change “Contact Salt Lake Center on 121.3” to “Contact Center on 121.3”
    • Don’t worry about location specific Sids, Stars, waypoints, etc, you will never get the clip to sound right
  • Try to get the ATC and pilot levels roughly the same in a clip. Highlight the part of the clip that is too low ans use the Audacity leveler to increase the volume on the part of the clip that is too low.
  • When working with feeds that may have both Approach and Departure instructions in them listen to the clip and when it is obviously one or the other type put in the right directory, Approach instructions in App directory and departure instructions is Dep directory. Examples:
    • “United 6626 you are cleared for ILS approach for runway 23 right, contact tower at 121.35” – this is clearly an Approach instruction and should go in the App directory.
    • “United 6626 climb to Flight Level 250 contact Center on 122.5” – this is clearly a Departure instruction.
    • “United 6626 you have traffic at 2 O-Clock at flight level 120” – Could be either approach or departure, it does not matter.
  • When working with ground and tower feeds that have controllers handling both arrivals and departures try to put those instructions that are clearly arrival oriented into the Dest Gnd or Dest Twr directories and put those instructions that are clearly departure instructions in the Dep Gnd or Dep Twr directories. Examples:
    • “United 6626 Line up and wait” should go in the Dep Twr directory.
    • “United 6626 Cleared to land runway 28 Left” should go in the Dest Twr directory
    • “United 6626 Taxi to gate C16 via Alpha, Lima, Hotel, hold short runway 2 left” should go in the Dest Gnd directory
    • “United 6626 Taxi to runway 4 left via Bravo, Hotel, Lima, hold short runway 4 right and runway 4 left” Should go in the Dep Gnd directory
    • “United 6626 contact tower on 121.5” Should go in the Dep Gnd directory
    • “United 6626 contact ground on 124.5” Should go in the Dest Twr directory
    • “United 6626 contact departure on 127.2” Should go in the Dep Twr directory
  • Generally try to keep the voices different when populating Departure and Destination Gnd, Twr, and Uni directories. Ideally these would be clips from different airports. This makes it a bit more realistic when you execute your flight in the simulator as you will hear different people and runway / taxiway instructions between you departure and destination airports.
  • If you have Pilot2ATC fly with just your clips and make sure they sound right for where you are in your flight. Eating your own dog food before submitting helps with quality control.

Good Reception Feeds

It can take time hunting around on LiveATC.net trying to find feeds that have good reception for the ATC facility as well as aircraft. Here is a list of feeds that have know good reception. If you find others email me and I’ll update this list.

US

App: KSDF, KPHX, KSEA, KATL, KCLE, KDEN, KSFO 28L
Clr: KATL
Ctr: ZID Indy, ZBW ACK17 Cape18, ZDV Denver High North, ZMP Sec 25, ZOA Oakland, ZLA LA
Dep: KSDF, KPHX, KSEA, KSFO, KJFK, KDEN

Dep_Gnd: KMDW, KPHL, KATL, KDEN, KDCA
DEp_Twr: KMDW, KBWI, KBOS, KDEN, KSAN
Dep_Uni: KIND, KHBZ, KJWY, MA;NH;CT Area
Dest_Gnd: KATL, KDEN, KBWI, KLAX
Dest_Twr: KBOS, KDEN, KLAX
Dest_Uni: MA;NH;RI; CT Area

Canada

Ctr: Moncton Center (YHZ)
Ctr: Edmonton Center (CZEG)
Ctaf: Burlington (CZBA)
Gnd: Lester B. Pearson (CYYZ)

Europe

EHAM

EHRD

LHBP

Submitting Your Files

Once you have populated your directory tree with clips you will want to zip them up into a single zip file and post them to the submission folder on Google Drive. Take a look at the MXE-Sample-Submission.zip file in the submissions folder to see what the tree should look like. Add your three letter prefix to the front of the zip file like the example so we can tell yours apart from others.

Send an email to Mark@StickandRudderStudios.com and let me know that you posted it so I can include your submission in the collection once I have verified that they look OK. Once you have sent me 100 clips that I can accept I’ll add you to the production folder on Google Drive which will give you access to all the files submitted to date.

Google Drive maintains versions so you can keep uploading updated versions of the zip file without changing the name. Just make sure you let me know when you send a new version so I know to take it.

I Want to Keep Going

We always appreciate those volunteers who want to contribute more than the 100 clips required to get a free copy of X-ATC-Chatter. Just keep adding to your personal collection tree on your computer. When ready, just zip the entire tree up again, including any clips you previously submitted, and upload them to the submissions directory on Google Drive. You can continue to use the same zip file name since Google Drive will automatically maintain versions of the file. Please send me an email each time you upload a new version so I know to add your new version to the master collection.

Always maintaining a local tree with all your clips allows you to go back and correct any clip you may have previously submitted should you find a mistake. When I add your new submission to the master collection any previous clips with the same name will get updated with the newer version.

Questions

If you have any questions you can either email me or post them on this thread on X-Plane.org:

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/125982-atc-chatter-files-new-project/