M

mcencula

Well Known Member
This weekend, our EAA Chapter took a tour of the CMH control tower. The gentleman who organized the tour mentioned some issues with the way radar data is handled and presented (or not presented) to the controllers. It turns out he has a website and several papers online that discuss the issues.

The short version is this:

There are cases in which all the hardware is working correctly (i.e. radar towers are transmitting, transponders are responding, the responses are received) but the aircraft is not shown on the controller's display. If you're interested, here is a paper that discusses the problems. It's a long, but fairly easy read (not too technical).

I found it to be very eye opening.
 
Interesting...

When I was a student pilot training back east, I was on a solo cross country flight TAN-SFM-CON-VWD-1JD-TAN in a Piper Warrior.

On the last leg of the flight, I was using flight following at about 5,500' msl, steady on course and altitude, when a King Air descended from above and passed in front of me no more than about 200'.:eek: We were both traveling the same direction (east bound), and it scared the bejesus out of me! Since he was descending and passed in front of me, he never saw me.

Being new to the whole aviation thing, (I only had 25 hours in my logbook at the time), I didn't know what to do, so I didn't do anything. I just continued my flight until I arrived home. I couldn't understand how I could be using flight following and not get some type of warning about the King Air. Worse, I couldn't understand how the King Air was permitted to descend in my path!

This paper explains a lot about how radar services are given, and probably explains my near mid-air.

Thanks for the link!
 
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