Originally Posted by
ACW342
Chevron,
That would have been Northern radar then, with PRESTON AIRWAYS up at the back with, IIRC, a single suite consisting of 2 controllers, 2 assistants, 1 tracker and 1 height finder. (Yes folks, 3 FIRs! Scottish, Preston and London).
It was, from my point of view as a servant of the Blue Line Master Race, a brilliant job, especially the controllers assistant part. I suspect that those of us who served at ATCRUs like the dairies and had to manually track 8 returns at once can still beat their grandchildren on modern computer games.
A342
p.s. I think my controller, who instructed me one night, to take 2 pairs of Lightenings on recovery to Binbrook, while he was playing Bridge up on the bridge with the co-ordinator and two assistants, made his 7 no trumps (or was it 7 spades?) Oh and Northern was JUST outside the Midland overhead!
I was there in '73 and I seem to recall that on the civil UAS suite, we operated with 2 assistants writing up flight data on the edge lit board between the 2 radar consoles plus 2 trackers, one for each console; the height finder wasn't permanently manned; you just shouted 'height please' and hoped someone was there to look at it.
I think I rather 'freaked out' some of the RAF guys one sunday. Mainland and North Sea positions were bandboxed and whereas the RAF guys dealt with off route traffic with a maximum of 4 tracks each, suddenly I had 16 tracks on frequency, fortunately all were on known routings and most of them were overflights and did not require climb or descent so I was quite relaxed, but the poor tracker trying to deal with 16 tracks was working his b@lls off!
A third console well away from the 2 upper airspace ones was used as a joint operation with Boulmer. It was called the 'Northern Joint Radar Service Area' (forerunner of 'Pennine Radar') and was for traffic below FL245 to/from Newcastle and Teeside which was leaving/joining controlled airspace at Pole Hill. Although this control position was moved occasionally, it was usually next to the console occupied by the co-ordinator who kept a 'log' of levels in use in the Lindholme T82 overhead; same type of radar as Midland but apparently with a much smaller overhead - wonder why that was?
My mentor did one session with me on this console when I started my training and thereafter he stayed in the rest room for extra tea/extra fag whenever we were rostered on it!