Originally Posted by
ShyTorque
I always understood the steeper glidepath angle was to avoid "Cody's Tree".
Not since it was 'stolen' by DRA/DERA/Qinetiq and moved to Cody Site about a mile to the northwest.
3.5 deg GPs were adopted due to a design system called 'APATC-1' which was mandated for MOD airfields back in the '80s.
This involved a different way of calculating approach minima compared to the ICAO method used for civil airfelds, the 'dominant obsatcle' on runway 24 being --- the control tower!!
Once that was demolished in early 2003, we could have reduced to a 3 deg GP under both APATC-1 and ICAO methods of iap design.