George Glass, not that furphy again
.
“In the US there is radar coverage down to 500 feet nation wide.”
This simply has no factual basis at all. Possibly we could get someone who is reading this in the USA to come on and give us the facts.
I do remember when I last checked, there was a Class D tower less than 100 nautical miles to the west of Washington DC that had no radar coverage below 6,000 feet AGL. I also remember when I last flew in the basin to the south west of San Francisco, I wasn’t far out but dropped out of radar coverage at 9,000 feet.
This furphy was used to stop change for many years.
Of course, the crazy flight service/ATC “they shall never meet” system meant that when accidents like MDX occurred over Barrington Tops, the pilot was never able to talk to the radar controller. If he had have been able to do this, he probably would have been told he was going at right angles to the correct direction for something like 20 minutes.
Yes, to me, as I look back it was a classic example of the most enormous resistance to change, which is still happening today.