Air traffic Controllers have no way of telling the
altitude of an aircraft without SSR or a talkdown radar.
Air defenders used height finding radar which is not
available at civil units (I don't think it's in use
anymore; maybe). Some civil units in the UK have made
use of Air Traffic radar at military units, but this
is straight forward ATC equipment, the same as at any
airport.


At 11:06 22 August 2006, Don Johnstone wrote:
I think you will find that and ordinary primary radar
can give an approximate height when processed. This
'Height' is not accurate enough to provide seperation
for controllers but is available. The slant range to
the target is used as one measurement and the other
is the point on the globe over which the target is.
with two sides known of a right angled triangle the
third side is calculated by using Pythagorus, the square
of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares
on the other two sides, the slant range being the hypotenuse.


At 03:36 22 August 2006, Mal wrote:

'Don Johnstone' wrote in message
...
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.




http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/radar-reflector-e.html

http://www.cap.gov/visitors/news/cap...ex.cfm?fuseact

ion=display&nodeID=6192&newsID=1918&year=2005&m onth=12

Would appear that they can get a primary paint sent
an email to airservices
and asked the same question I asked in here lets see
what they say.

Mal