At 23:00 21 August 2006, Lew Hartswick wrote:
Mark Dickson wrote:
Unless the glider was transponder equipped, the only
radar that could give the height would be a Precision
Approach Radar (Talkdown). This only scans 10 degrees
either side of the runway centreline and is not widely
used at civilian airports. If ATC knew the height
I think it would have been via a report from another
aircraft.

I think you will find that air defence radars are very
capable of giving an accurate height and in many cases
civilian air traffic radars are taking a feed from
the very same radar heads as the military. Plus there
is a deal more co-operation between the civilian and
military radars in the present climate. The feed that
the civilian world gets from the military heads is
only cut down in range and tailored to the need of
the controller.

Many years ago I visited a local airfield radar and
they did not have their own radar transmitter. They
used a feed from the Air Defence radar situated just
down the road.