Recreate Live Air Traffic Control

Live Air Traffic Control recordings are available from sites such as LiveATC. In the Aviation English literature when transcripts of traffic are published most of the time the recordings are not generally available. There is a way to recreate these.

First use a text to speech site to get an audio file of a transcript you want to use. This one called FreeTTS for example is free with a number of voice options. Note this one does have limits on number of times you can use it in any one week. Another thing to note is that some words which have various pronunciations may be a sticking point. For example “wind” is pronounced as the verb and I want the noun. So I had to use “winnd” in the text.

Then use an audio program such as Audacity to process the audio. You need to apply first a high-pass filter and then a distortion effect. If you want to add a polish you can use what is called a radio beep/bleep noise and/or a static noise background. You may also need to normalise audio if volume is too low due to previous high pass filter and distortion effects.

Here is an example of a recreated audio (transcript from Prado et al. 2019) –

References

Prado, M., Roberts, J., Tosqui-Lucks, P., & Friginal, E. (2019). The development of aviation English programs. In E. Friginal, E. Mathews, & J. Roberts (Eds.), English in global aviation: Context, research, and pedagogy (pp. 215–246). Bloomsbury.

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