Farnborough has access to several different radar heads in order to service East and North sectors;the 'main' head for north is situated at Stansted but due to maintenance, this was supplanted by the Debden radar which is really designed for en-route rather than terminal tasks; Heathrow radar heads are also available.
North sector was open from 1000 - 1600 on friday and 1000 to 1700 today.

Nobody think of using Northolt's head?

The radar located at Northolt is primary only and not piped into the NATS network. Coverage from Stansted, Debden and Heathrow primary and secondary sources should be more than adequate for the Sector 3 task in normal circumstances.

TC, you're having a laugh, aren't you? Debden doesn't see very well down that way and we all know how well the Stansted radar doesn't see Cirrus (especially those which are working Thames Control) in that area. :oh: As for 'Northolt isn't piped into the NATS Network', I would hazard a guess that Farnborough has only recently gained the luxury of more than one or two radar sources so there has probably been a fair bit of piping-in done already. There is only one primary radar that has good solid coverage there; I suspect the reason behind radar selection is more business based than common-sense based.

Lurking

I bow to your superior knowledge.

Don't you just love anonymous fora?:) very modest TC LTN:)

As the Northolt Watchman radar is not 'owned' by NATS, it cannot be used. I must admit it would be useful, but Stansted and Debden are available (but not at the same time), as are the 10cm (old) and 23cm from Heathrow. What the coverage of the 'new' Heathrow 10cm will be like we don't know; it's only just being/been calibrated.
Farnborough has always had primary and secondary 'feeds' from other radar sites by the way, ever since the first SSR displays in 1981.

I used them on the 19th on a flight from Stapleford to Sheffield City. Had FIS all the way from Stapleford to DTY VOR before switching to EMA radar.

Only probelm was they were trying to contact us around Halton but we were only at 1,000ft around there so I think we may have been too low to receive them due to the terrain, but once we climbed to 2500ft we could pick them up again.

Great service, will be using it again for sure.

:D

Don't you know Halton has an ATZ? If you were at 1000ft you should have been talking to 130.425.
Yes we know there's a 'blind' area on 132.8, the techies are working on it.

I flew to Wycombe Air Park today and used the LARS north service while routing through the Stansted / Luton gap. I must say I was very impressed. Definitely worth a call! :ok: