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On the Airbands
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Mr C A Pemberton from Wahroonga in Sydney wrote to me a while back, but I haven’t had space to acknowledge him in the column until now.
He states that he is “intrigued by the gentleman who has operated the ATIS on 317kHz (now also heard on VHF comms 133.85) at Sydney Airport for a number of years.” Mr Pemberton goes on to say “I appreciate that the service is broadcast automatically, but he presumably has to be there, or somewhere, to make a new recording every time conditions change. Yet I have heard him at 6am with ALPHA, and late at night with TANGO, and it’s always the same voice, with an unemotional US accent. I have considered that he might be computer generated, but listening carefully, it doesn’t sound as if it is chopped into syllables. So when does he sleep, and does he ever take a holiday?” Well I guess it’s to the great credit of the people at the CAA who programmed in the “voice” for this completely computerised service, now known correctly as C-ATIS, or computer ATIS. The US accent programmed so carefully is easy on the ears, unemotional, and the controllers who actually type in the ATIS messages are doing so with consummate skill. The outgoing messages are “almost human” in sound. The beauty of the C-ATIS is that flight decks on aircraft fitted with data printers can enable the crews to get hardcopy printouts of the ATIS in the cockpit, as it’s broadcast. Most of the major capital cities now feature C-ATIS.
While we’re on the subject of Sydney, just reiterating that old Approach and Departures frequencies 126.1 and 125.3 are returning as Sydney Director West and Sydney Director East, and will take the aircraft from mid downwind leg to when they join final, and change to Tower.
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