Welcome to this community. Hope you’ll stick around and contribute.
With the Live environment Air Traffic Controlling is a great way of interacting with other pilots and providing a service for them at airports. To all the tips, I want to add my recommendation to become a good ATC.
- Step 1. Fly! Become a good pilot. Be able to control that aircraft, know how high to fly, how to approach an airport, understand the Pattern, know how and when to request a transition, learn what an ILS Approach is, know how to exit over a parallel runway, etc. Check out the #tutorials section for lots of good info.
- As @Gabe_Z suggested: study the ATC training videos. Watch them 5 times to fully understand. Focus on the Ground, Tower Arrivals, Tower Advanced, Sequencing, etc
- Search this forum for the Golder Rules of controlling and start controlling.
- Focus on Tower and Ground. Leave Radar controlling for later. Forget about KLAX, KSFO, etc because (1) they get too busy and (2) the percentage of bad pilots is too high.
- When you want feedback from the community on your controlling, create an ATC tracking thread.
Once you’re at step 5, and you’re getting good feedback, and you’re still enjoying it, it may be a good time to apply to join the IFATC team, take your theory and practical controlling test and continue your controlling career on Expert server.
Have fun 😊