ATC Coms - Some Clear, Some Boomhauer

[WDD]

Did a nice 6 hour X Country yesterday, and got to interact with several controllers - Clearance, Departure, Tracon, Centers, Towers; got just about every flavor across a wide area.

Most were clear. But some sounded somewhat distorted. Something between a bad cell reception and listening to a stereo with a blown bass giving a buzzing distortion.

Does anyone monitor the sound quality of the transmissions? Are there evens standards established? Is there any signal processing to remove extraneous "noises" in the transmissions?

Nothing was completely unintelligible, but got me thinking about why some controllers were easy to understand and some weren't.

I use a LightSpeed Zulu 3, and yes I've had my hearing checked.

 

[flyingron]

Dag-gum Cessna, man, ol' seven-one-four, that Yankee Fox... , talkin' 'bout gotta get on up there, man. Dang ol' climbin', yeah, up to seven thou, man, gotta hold her steady, you know, just... just keep on climbin' up... talkin' 'bout maintainin' now... dang ol' seven thousand feet, man.

 

[WDD]

Something like that, but spoken through a kazoo.

 

[Groundpounder]

Nothing worse than a female Scottish controller on one of their dicey radios after coasting in at the bottom of your circadian cycle.

 

[WDD]

 

[AV8R_87]

The SNL skit is good, but nothing beats good ol' Bob: