London Area LARS

[John Dean]

Information from another BB:-

From April 2008 the London Area LARS service is to be extended to cover the Northern Area, including Luton and Stansted.

There will be a transition period affecting the current LARS services :-

From 28 January to 10 February the LARS East sector on 123.225 MHz will be suspended in order to install and test equipment required for the new North Service.

The LARS East service will restart at 0800 on 11 February.

From 01 to 09 March the LARS North Sector will be open on frequency 132.8 MHz from 1000 to 1600 local time for controller training. NATS urge pilots to use this service during the training period.

From 20 to 31 March LARS East (123.225 MHz) and the new North (!32.8 MHz) sectors will operate from 1000 to 1700 local time.

LARS West (125.25 MHz) will continue to operate throughout without disruption from 0800 to 2000 local time.

From 1 April all three sectors will operate from 0800 to 2000 local time, 7 days a week except for Christmas Day and Boxing Day when all three will be closed.

Good news for those of us who operate in the busy southeast.

[John Dean]

Full details available here

[Penguin]

This is an excellent service, long may it continue. It would be even better if the 3 sectors would hand over traffic from sector to sector and would carry over squawks. The frequency congestion on LARS West on a nice sunny weekend afternoon can be incredible. In a reasonably fast aeroplane you can easily be halfway across the area before being able to get a word in edge ways. Many pilots using the service on a winter weekend are a little hesitant on the radio (and usually read back far too much), anything that will reduce the amount of radio traffic will greatly increase the capacity of the service. The ability to go from Southampton to Cambridge with one or two radio calls will be great.

Peter