From earlyish (probably April) next year the Farnborough LARS service will extend to north of GW and SS.
The extension of this service to the 'home counties' area north of London should resolve the issue of GA PPLs 'freecalling' Luton Radar for ATSOCAS and in doing so, giving their life history on what's an increasingly busy IFR radio frequency. However, it will also be necessary for Luton Radar to be consistent, and to transfer any of these flights that do call, to Farnborough LARS when it's open, otherwise pilot confusion will undoubtedly develop.
What remains to be resolved - and it's relatively endemic for the Luton CTR/CTA (and to a lesser but equally significant degree, to Stansted's CTR/CTA) is just who a Denham, Elstree, Stapleford, Panshangar, Cranfield, Cambridge, Duxford or North Weald GA flight for example, should contact after take-off if the intended route will be through either's controlled airspace.
Particularly in a twin, the time taken to clean up, clear the circuit, change frequency, get identified by Farnborough, state the pilot's intentions, request and agree a service and then request a 'zone transit' will be insufficient to avoid becoming an 'infringer'.
Thus it might prove better for such controlled airspace transit flights to continue to 'freecall' Luton Radar (or for Stansted, Essex Radar) direct.
In the days when Luton was a LARS unit, on a busy day the LARS controller's task was akin to playing squash simultanously against two or more other opponants: the coordination needed between the Luton Director and the Luton LARS controller just had to be seen to be believed - and these guys were sitting next to each other in the same control room communicating face-to-face, not via what will be a telephone (albeit a 'hot line') link.
Having said all that, the extension of Farnborough LARS to 'Home Counties North' will provide a
dedicated ATC service that's be needed for a very long time: thanks goodness someone somewhere identified (no pun intended...) the need and took the necessary remedial action.
NATS = 9-9-9-9-9 CAA = 0-0-0-0-0
New (no?) balls please...
