Originally Posted by
P160
The Heathrow 23cm radar was mounted on a concrete tower adjacent to Terminal 1 car park in the central landside area by the exit/entrance to the tunnel giving access to the terminals from the A4 and M4 spur. It was known as the "Car Park" radar and was removed from service and its replacement operates from Bovingdon, near Hemel Hempstead. To give better low level coverage in the absence of the 23cm radar another Raytheon ASR10 was installed southside near to T4, this supplemented the Raytheon ASR10 east of what was T2, The Queens Building and T1, these both replaced the Watchman which was sited where T5 is now. For interest the Watchman replaced the Plessey AR1 sited just north of T3 and the Cossor ACR6 which was sited south of T3 where AOSU is or was in 2010 when I retired. The building of T5 also nessesited the resiting of the DF and the Rx site.
Apologies; I remember the Perry Oaks Watchman now. Vague recollection that a Heathrow controller told me they didn't use it much as its site meant it had poor low cover, plus it was in the way of T5 development.
When Farnborough opened LARS East, the T2 10cm was piped in but we preferred to use the Pease 23cm or the Car Park 23cm until one day a NATS engineer came down, fiddled with one of our displays, then got up and left after announcing we now had the T4 10cm instead of the T2 one. Course we couldn't use it straight away as he didn't leave us any paperwork but next day I was on LARS East and had it selected when a helicopter called me between Herne Bay and Reculver at 800ft and to my amazement I could identify it! I found the low cover from this radar was superior to the Car Park 23 cm so from then on, used it in preference.