Yep, but you'd need a scanner and details of the frequency that the control tower would be using.
Each airport will have a bunch of different frequencies, a dedicated weather channel, an approach channel, ground control like shunting the aircraft around, and lots of other airline specific channels where Thompson orders new napkins etc.

You can sometimes find some internet sites that relay the channels too.

Why didnt it just turn left? Was the pilot like my nan used to be about crossing oncoming traffic, she would never turn right unless it was at a set og lights.

Altitude in metres! what are you a communist? Put it in proper units immediately

Ta

Thanks guys I had a feeling the air traffic was restricted over the UK. Would just have been interesting to see what the emergency was and how Bristol controlled it's own traffic to presumably allow him to land straight away.

I had a feeling that may get picked up, I only changed it the other day as I never could grasp the Knots system. When I use to jump out of Hercs the load master would give wind speed in Knots and I never knew if I was jumping into a hurricane or a clear night. I've changed it back and will learn it.

I'll do a proper search and see what I can come up with as far as troll sites with possible UK scanner frequency's.

I'll take you up on that offer at some stage, I even found myself looking at the requirements to become an ATCO, it does interest me a lot.
Also been thinking about doing a real flight simulator, and seeing if I like it.
http://www.virtualaviation.co.uk/pages/flight-simu...

It's weird that you say there is a slight delay as the traffic over the girlfriends place is real time, very accurate to even coincide with crossing land marks at exactly the right time. Maybe down to altitude and proximity to a ground beacon.

I initially got the App to try and find out what a certain small propped aircraft was that would do very high altitude circles over NW London but it didn't show up. So like you say not all craft are visible.
Thanks for your help on this.

I'm afraid I agree. I just took the dogs out and stood directly under the air traffic, I zoomed in to the street I was on and the aircraft showed up exactly in real time. There was recently a software update so not sure if this has anything to do with it.
It may vary depending on the receivers and a whole host of other variables.

I now find myself listening to the JFK control tower and watching the flight data. My misses hates me.

Alex maybe you're also getting the flight radar info on a slow connection?

Presumably that's because your picture is based on actual positions of the aircraft without predicting positions in between? flight radar projects their position based on the last speed. (Depending on options selected) Often on approach where the speed is decelerating, the aircraft move backwards slightly when an update at a slower speed appears after the projected position based on the previous higher speed.

So it would seem: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archive/ra/publicat...

But as a holder of a CAA RT licence, am I allowed to listen on my iCom to ATC while driving to the airfield to get runway in use, QFE/QNH, figure out how busy the circuit is, etc?

In fact, given multi-tracking radar data and data correlation with an Airspace Computer (I know what ours is called, not the Eurocontrol system though), radar update is every 6 seconds, so it's always behind 'reality' (as Alex alluded to earlier on).
I've noticed it's slower compared to radar as well; the prediction tools that Flightradar uses are obviously only so good.
I find it fascinating however.

Some interesting development underway using generic USB DTV tuners (a tenner on eBay) and Software Defined Radio to decode ADBS/Mode-S traffic (a lot cheaper than the mainstream decoders...)

http://www.hamradioscience.com/rtl1090-ads-b-decod...

https://www.cgran.org/wiki/gr-air-modes