ATC with a problem!
We often fly into London Southend Airport (Stobart International) as that is where our club is based (although we fly from a different airfield/farm strip) and I was made aware today of some very strange goings on!
Most people are aware that Southend are about the most anal of ATCs and have a pretty bad reputation around here (apart from one controller who is a really decent bloke) by intimidating students, which they should be very wary of after what happened there a few years ago, and generally being unhelpful.
I was once accused by them of flying across their fan lines (outside the ATZ) when a jet was landing and the manager said he was going to report me to the CAA. I went to see him as I was not even flying in the area and had proof that I was not, and he said he had reported me as the eye witness had reported that it was a small white tricycle plane that he followed on radar back to my airfield and phoned them to report me (I got the call from our radio operator that I was in trouble when I was 15 miles away in the other direction!) I asked how he come to my Reg. And he said he looked at the records of planes landing there from our airfield and I had landed there a few days before! (There are 7 small white tricycle planes based at our field by the way!)
We had another guy going into an farm strip right on the edge of their ATZ and he was on a FIS with them and when he got near the farm strip he asked for weather, the Controller was quite abrupt and said no as he was not landing there!! The pilot asked him to give him the weather again as he was landing at an airfield 2.5 miles away and it would be nice to have at least an idea of wind direction and the pilot was made to feel very small on the radio! Not a good service.
There has been many more but this post is long enough!
Anyway, I found out today that the manager of the ATC has one radio tuned into our farm strip frequency so he can keep an eye on us!! (We are 40 miles away) Surely this is an abuse of his duties! He is very petty and likes reporting people, one guy had his PTT switch stuck down for a few mins on their freq. (which does happen sometimes) and I was told today that that he has been reported to the CAA (for what??)
I suppose it did not help that when the guy realised that it had stuck down he apologised to everyone about it then switched to our farm strip freq. and said to one of the others that it was a good job that the manager was not on as he is a TW*T!! (not realising that the manager tunes into our freq.!)
Has anyone else had this kind of surveillance from them and is it the “done” thing to spend your time listening in on other airfields frequencies just so they can catch them at something when they should be serving the aviators?
Rant over!