Rumour mongers have suggested AsA has ordered another portable radar, with no intention of moving Launey.
Coverage to the ground at LT, and genereally 6- 8,000 @ Hb. ***political comment deleted***. Flights such as HB to DPO,WYY SMI etc marginal at 8 most of the way in the crz. Good for tp's out of DPO, on at about 7-8k out of WYY. Not too much chop for the twins along the north coast and out to KII unless quite high, but on a good day macedon gets them as well.
Lt-Fli not bad for half the flight at 6-7k.
As far as standards go, radar is proving very useful. The towers are not radar (Lt has TSAD but is not allowed to use it for sep... picture only display, no interaction) and have to have a procedural standard given to them, but on the other hand it is sometimes easier and less restrictive achieving that standard using radar than it was before we had it.
The real difference is the radar DTI. Enroute controllers have to watch for vfr in E and inform the towers if they think there is going to be an issue for any of the twrs' IFR a/c (what was the coverage at HB again?). We now have hotlines to the towers ( like a hotline to the flow... ding....wait...lol).
Better than it was.
Cheers,
R-S.
PS Chapi, how's the XP?
A little side note to any pilots from Tas who may be reading this, if you want to take advantage of this radar service after your "radar service" has been terminated, keep your code til landing (as per AIP). It\'s been generally pretty good.
Some others may question why they get codes and never seem to get identified. Some of the time you probably are on radar but not consistantly. It\'s no good identifying and terminating services every two minutes, but it\'s better to be positively identified by us some of the time, even if you are not aware of it. If we have a traffic issue it\'ll often mean a better description of the picture being passed by the controller.
R-S.
