Originally Posted by
TheOddOne
Chevvron,
Firstly, thank you for all you hard work at Farnborough Radar. I hugely benefited from your service when I worked at Denham a decade and a half ago - I was working the first morning of the change to Basic and Traffic service.
I actually retired from Farnborough slightly before the changeover from FIS/RIS to TS/DS in 2009 however I did participate in a 'workshop' at the CAA in London in early 2008 where the details of the proposed 'new' system were discussed plus during that time and for some time after retirement I attended UK Phraseology Working Group meetings at Gatwick.
At that workshop, I got the distinct impression that it was 'controlled' by the military element of the participants so there was little difference between the 'old' and 'new' services.
I and at least one other person tried to 'push' the idea of moving back to the 'original' system (and was firmly put down) of using radar as part of the Flight Information Service as notified in ICAO Doc 4444 para 8.11 which was used in UK airspace up to about 1978 and which I understand is used as 'standard' in much of Europe but I got the impression the decision had already been taken before the workshop and was not to be changed, hence we ended up in the present situation.
At least I was able to launch the concept of expanding LARS coverage to the volume of airspace under the LTMA covering the areas around Denham and Elstree; I did used to operate from Denham at one time but due to the then aerodrome operator objecting to my participating in an interview with AAIB which didn't leave his operation in a good light, I switched to flying from Blackbushe.