Originally Posted by
Sir Niall Dementia
Chevvron;
Im Oxford based and my experience on an almost daily basis is that the Farnborough LARS coverage peters out near Aylesbury Thame gliding site and is pretty much non existent north of there.
The BNN site helps, but it doesn't cover the lee of the ridge that well.
SND
Correction: the SERVICE peters out near Aylesbury, but radar coverage is excellent. I've never seen the new Bovingdon 23 cm radar but if it's any near as good as the Debden which can see aircraft just above the ground at Wyton, then barring some shielding by the Chiltern Ridge, low coverage in the WCO area must be quite good. Even when I was at Farnborough, the Heathrow 10cm radar could see traffic just below 1,500ft in this area.
Just in case you think the lower limit of 1,500 ft below which Farnborough will not provide radar service is due to radar coverage, it's not. In the planning stages, the CAA insisted we put a common lower limit on radar service provision over the entire LARS area rather than have sectors where the lower limit varied from this so we came up with 1,500ft for terrain clearance. Even this of course, doesn't apply within 3nm of the Midhurst and Sevenoaks TV masts though!