Originally Posted by
Heston
Farnborough have defined areas of responsibility. the others in practice have the extent of their radar coverage, which is variable and difficult to define. Sometimes it's seems to depend on whether the controller likes you or not!
I never minded providing a service outside the 'defined area' provided I wasn't in someone else's LARS area and provided it didn't degrade the service I was providing to other traffic inside my defined area.
On one day on LARS North, I first picked up a Hawk routing from Biggin to Valley and no sooner had I transferred him to London Military Radar east of Daventry for a Daventry crossing than Cottesmore phoned up to hand me a pair of Tornados in the same area inbound to Northolt. I gave Luton Radar a bit of a fright with those as I delayed their descent to go under the LTMA west of BKY until the last minute.
Nowadays the controllers at Farnborough are reluctant to do this due to what I'm told is more rigid application of the rules however the fact remains, Farnborough LARS sectors have sufficient radar coverage to operate well outside their notified areas of operation, especially to the north as the new radar head at Bovingdon must be on line nowadays and being some 500ft amsl, it would give excellent low cover north of the Chiltern Hills.