A tower-induced go-round

In article .com,
"Jay Honeck" wrote:

I submit that if these airports are busy enough to need a control
tower, than they should merit radar. (I know some already have it,
but most do not.)

Getting radar coverage for every control tower would be quite expensive.



This weird mish-mash of some Class D's with, and some without radar,
makes for a pretty bizarre set of circumstances for pilots.
Personally I find it just a bit odd, and a little uncomfortable, not
knowing if I'm being controlled by Mr. Magoo with binoculars, or
George Jetson with radar.

Prior to 9/11, I would occasionally visit the tower at KBED on quiet mornings
(usually Sunday). They have a feed from the ASR-9 at Boston and optionally
the ASR at MHT. These radars are blinds below around 600 feet at the airport
and traffic to the southwest of KBED has to be up around 2000 feet to be
reliably visible on radar. Anyway, the controllers were clear that their job
was to visually seperate traffic and didn't like the controllers that stared
at the DBRITE instead of looking out the window.

--
Bob Noel
(gave up looking for a particular sig the lawyer will hate)