"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message
...
I just visited our local control tower. We're a small field.
Interesting things I learned include ...

1) There is just one guy working at a time, plus a possible second
doing paperwork. There are five guys total on staff. They are all ex
military.

2) There is a radar on the field, and the tower is wired to show the
radar to the guys in the cab, but there is in fact no display. The
display is in center, 400 miles away. To get a display they need
30,000 movements per year. They have 29,000.

3) Often there is only one guy on duty. When he needs to go to the
bathroom, he can take a hand held radio and field calls sitting in the
"office".

4) They have a mental list of pilots that need special attention.
They don't write it down.

5) General Aviation activity is decreasing locally. They blame fuel
prices.

6) One of the five guys is a pilot who owns a Cherokee, but he doesn't
fly because it's too expensive.

7) There is an emergency generator. They test it once per week for a
hour.

8) The cab has weights for weightlifting, fridge and microwave, but no
television.

It sounds as if it's a non-fed tower. There's a lot of factors that
determine if a tower gets a radar display. First of all, if they don't have
a terminal radar in the area, they will never have a display in the tower.
If the only radar in the area goes back to the center, it can't be used for
the tower. Center and terminal radars are two different animals. Some
terminal radars are piped into the center for coverage, and it is possible
to pipe the center radar back to a TRACON, but this is done only as a backup
to the terminal radar.

Most VFR tower controllers recognize most of the aircraft based on the field
if they've been there any length of time.