Have you ever wanted to try your hand at being an air traffic controller? This link will give you a little taste of the intricasies and stress a controller has to go through on a daily basis. Try to ident the incoming plane on the radar screen as soon as it makes initial contact with Atlanta tower, then see if you can follow it to final just by  listening to pilot and tower and watching the real time radar screen. When you get to the site, make sure you have your sound turned up, and click "view radar screen" (left hand margin of the page 1/2 way down). It's a fun way to spend a little time! Here's the link
http://www.atcmonitor.com/

That is very cool... they're pretty darn busy, even on a Saturday. Questions, though: What do the color codes mean, and what part of the aircraft "strip" shows altitude? That site has a lot of info, but no key to reading the display itself...any idea?

i believe it shows the dep and arr airports...the groundspeed and alltitude

Thanks for the update Saratoga 

I'm glad you like the site Saratoga. It sounds like you spend a lot of working hours with white knuckles and a sweaty forehead. Tell me more about it

Well, it's not white knuckle life or death flying, but ATC can make things complicated. Some of the worst ATC I have seen is around Miami during afternoon "rush hour" when there are storms around the airport. Flights being diverted, holding, takeoffs, more advanced aircraft landing, little prop planes scurrying past, quite amazing it all works. We just shutup in the cockpit, one of us focuses on flying, or rather monitoring the autopilot, and the other tunes his world out except for ATC, listening for any transmission that beings with American and our flight number. Then it's just see how fast we can reply to it and immediately input the required settings to do what is requested of us. Insane at times, but as long as everyone is cool and paying attention, the controllers know what they are doing and they can make it work.

Well, I'm not airline pilot (yet ), but I can tell you that in order to keep myself focused, concentrated and sharp, it often isn't fun when I'm flying because I'm very intent on what I'm doing, and I have every intention of doing things the best and safest way possible. My (ex) CFI, Zack, immediately saw this in me-it's not often you find this developed so early in a 15 year old GA pilot (many GA pilots are simply unsafe). Every time I see him (lol he still practically runs the airfield even though he now has a job elsewhere), he never forgets to mention what a great pilot I'm going to make.

For example-The last flight I took, my new CFI, Matti, took control of the airplane during taxi abruptly, pointed it towards a couple of other people, and exercised the throttle, revving it. While it was funny (he was a safe distance away), I had my eyes on the taxiway, getting ready to take back control of the plane and watching for traffic coming our way. After our flight, I walked into the terminal building to see Zack there-I was like "hey, when did you get here?" He just looked at me and said "what, are you blind? didn't you see me? I was the one Matti was doing the engine thing to". Naturally, I explained why I hadn't seen him and got the obligatory "you're gonna make a great pilot..."

In general, I am too concentrated on whatever I'm doing to truly enjoy it, which is why I enjoy my cross countries. When you're flying locally, you always have something to do. Not so when you're cruising for 45 minutes. Now thats fun.