"Richard Kaplan" wrote in message
s.com...

OK, I should not do this late at night.

I meant MGW is a NON-RADAR towered field.

Separation is certainly harder to maintain in a non-radar environment than
in a radar environment.


This is not a non-radar environment. Radar services are provided by
Clarksburg Approach, they're just 24 miles southwest of MGW. Examine the
ILS RWY 18 approach, note that DIXIN can be determined by radar or the
marker beacon. That tells us radar coverage is good in this area.



As far as separating traffic by altitude, there may
be limitations in terms of what airspace MGW tower "owns" vs. situations
where they need to coordinate separation with other ATC facilities.


MGW is a VFR tower, they don't "own" any airspace. Airway MEAs that cross
MGW VORTAC run 4000 to 5000 MSL, so any enroute IFR traffic would likely be
well above the 3700 MSL top of the MGW Class D airspace.



I can only tell you what happened on departure this date... clearly the
controller was not ideally skilled or else he would not have debated the
departure procedure with me, so it would not be surprising if he were also
not optimally skilled at non-radar aircraft separation procedures. You
are correct at stating what he COULD have done to separate me from other
traffic; I am just reporting what he DID do.


The tower controller probably isn't applying any separation at all, he's
probably just relaying the clearance he received from Clarksburg approach.
I'm not saying ATC didn't make an error here, I'm just saying he didn't
necessarily make the error you think he did. There may have been a
procedural error, or there may have been a phraseology error, or you may
have misinterpreted the clearance, or it may have been a combination. To
know for sure we'd need a transcript of the communications between approach,
tower, and you.