Who benefits from ATC with radar in the UK?

I’ve said the same time and time again, asked what’s the point of a “basic” service, it’s less use than an ashtray on my motorbike. I love flying in Germany, have traffic information given to me in a timely manner, regardless whether primary or secondary targets. In UK, flying is more stressful because you need to be vigilant for conflicting traffic ALL of the time, even when you are “looking inside” to do an instrument scan, change frequencies, change tank etc. A “basic” service is just a way of saying “we don’t want to pay for your security” instead only IFR flights are considered “valuable”…..

Did the other plane have an active transponder? Mode C at least? Did it have to at that particular place? If not, there’s nothing the radar operator could have done.

But I do know what it feels like, I have once been close to a head-on under similar circumstances. ‘t Was in class G, and I had been talking to the relevant FIS but the other one hadn’t – did not have to, either, strictly speaking. Scary it was!

Basic service from Inverness EGPE is very good for traffic information. Basic service from Lossiemouth EGQS LARS is usually also good for traffic information.

@Steve, IFR flights frequently get a basic service as well.

but it did make me wonder what actually they watch?

I wonder that too. Where I am, you have the 3 Farnborough Radar Services, and they do a very good job in very challenging conditions (50 EasyJet’s has to be easier to manage that 50 GA planes all over the place with varying levels of radio proficiency). But when you only get a basic service, you know you are on radar with a discrete code (properly, not like London Info where you kind of are), and you know that there will be visual and audible alerts (well I hope so) if two aircraft get close together. On a few occasions I have heard them say xxxx, be aware of traffic in your 2 o’clock same height while in receipt of a basic service, but maybe the ‘closeness’ thresholds are very narrow compared to those in CAS on an airway, and maybe they wont see or be warned about a conflict and they wont tell you. Of course with a basic service that’s what you expect, but if you know they can see you, you hope you will never get that close.

Then again yesterday I flew into Cambridge and some old tri-lander or something was coming in through the cloud on the NDB approach to runway 05, and ATC in this case only APP, and not RDR, were asking me and other GA traffic to stay south, stay north, or whatever was best to keep out of the way of the commercial traffic. I wouldn’t be feeling very assured if I was the captain of the tri-lander. OCAS, Radar Service is worth what you pay, and as you pay nothing (unless you land somewhere of course), that often it’s value to you.

Re the original post:

This is common, even under a Traffic Service. I have the active TAS/TCAS system so I see Mode A/C/S targets, with Mode A ones not showing altitude. I frequently get near misses, indicated on TCAS, which ATC doesn’t advise. Sometimes I ask them if they saw it and the answer is No, which seems bizzare because the planes in question were full size metal planes, usually. So I don’t know the real answer!

The best defence from a mid-air in the UK is to never fly below 2000ft, and be quick in and out in any Class G terminal area, and if it is too busy then clear off and come back 10 mins later. If you can combine it with not flying on a weekend that’s much better still. Above 3000ft there is virtually no traffic.

The nontransponding or Mode A crowd is quite big but nearly all of them fly below about 1500ft. That much is obvious when I get a visual contact on someone who is either not showing at all or is showing Mode A, and in just about every case they are way below me. I recall just one case of a piston twin who landed at Lydd who I had a near miss with and after landing I spoke to the pilot who showed me his GTX330 Mode S, but even when AIR mode was definitely selected there was nothing showing at all. I guess his antenna wasn’t connected… So “technical” solutions are not much good if you want to fly low down, and I am sure that will be equally true for whatever comes in the future e.g. ADS-B or FLARM or whatever. But then there is almost never a reason (i.e. CAS base) to fly that low in the UK. The worst case might be flying at 1300-1400ft under the 1500ft CAS base around Gatwick – it is packed with that type of traffic, working its way around the CTR

The controllers there must have their buttocks permanently glued together when they sit there with loads of primary or Mode A targets merging nicely with the jets going in and out. The word “hope” must have a whole new meaning.

I get the feeling that declaring yourself “IFR” in Class G to a radar unit can result in a better service, but on a nice weekend day it isn’t going to make any difference to getting a traffic service (regardless of what it is called) because the controller is likely to just give up on everybody.

IFR in CAS will (in the UK) always be on a “radar control service” – Scottish Control possibly excepted (long time since I tried it).

I tend to not take any Class G service too seriously but I call up a radar unit, for (a) emergency use and (b) they will probably tell me if I severely screw up and end up in CAS (which has never, ahem, almost pretty well never, happened to me haha ). I never call up a non-radar unit – it’s completely pointless unless required for a specific purpose like getting a provisional IFR clearance for London Control, via London Info.

It’s not a good situation but I can’t see any solution to getting a traffic service on a busy weekend day with good wx, short of separating out the airspace into loads of frequencies (ATC desks) and spending millions more on ATC, purely for light GA. It isn’t going to happen. The countries where you get a really good traffic service are ones where the traffic density ranges from zero to something far below the UK.

Interesting that the original post refers to a LARS unit.

Obviously the LARS unit is funded to provide a radar derived service to GA traffic. (For those who aren’t familiar with the UK, LARS=Lower Airspace Radar Service).

The lowest level of radar service is a traffic service.

Do they log all the refusals to provide a traffic service, and does that count against them in terms of funding next time around?

You may as well ask if the Pope would jump out of the window if extraterrestrial life was proven

I get the feeling that declaring yourself “IFR” in Class G to a radar unit can result in a better service, but on a nice weekend day it isn’t going to make any difference to getting a traffic service (regardless of what it is called) because the controller is likely to just give up on everybody.

On a few occasions I have said “Nxxxx, in IMC, request traffic service” and on those occasions I feel I got a traffic service when otherwise I might not have. Of course “in IMC” isn’t standard phraseology, but it was ‘advice’ given by an instructor and secondly if you need it for safety reasons, be pushy and try and get it.