PAR was fundamentally different in that it provided an electronic glidepath and thus had the same minima as Cat 1 ILS.
I did my last PAR in 2001; after that the thresholds moved so without a complete and expensive setting up flight check which wasn't necessary as we had ILS being installed for the new thresholds, we couldn't use it any more. Mind you we already had a LLZ/DME on one end and when that was installed, I made sure the touchdown point was the same as the PAR so we could do a hybrid approach; the pilot would follow the LLZ guidance while the PAR controller gave him instructions to maintain the glidepath.
My last SRA was 30 Nov 2008, the day I retired as an ATCO and 2 weeks before I became a FISO.
Last edited by chevvron; 6th May 2021 at 12:56.