Friend of the channel, ATCO Henry Spurgeon at Southend aerodrome asked me if I’d be a guinea pig for some training he needed to do.
He had to practise some Surveillance Radar Approaches, and needed a pilot willing fly the procedure. I was more than happy to oblige, since I had never flown an SRA before.
A SRA is a rarely used procedure, but is a means of getting an aircraft safely down in IMC, when either navigation aids are out of service, or an aircraft’s navigation equipment is not available. In these situations, an experienced radar controller could talk an aircraft down through the clouds, all the way to the runway, pretty much!
This video was filmed long before the lockdown, and hopefully is a nice distraction to those stuck indoors.
Video in association with Blackbushe Flying Group