Narrative:

Today our airport surveillance radar (ASR) was scheduled to be taken out for maintenance for an expected time of 14 hours. The radar was taken out of service as scheduled. We were told we can continue to work the airspace and we were instructed to remain in fusion [radar data received from other radar sites] mode. Since our local ASR antenna was out; stars facility was relying on center's two radar sites; as well as ads-B for the fusion mode. All the aircraft we worked were showing 'isr' on their data blocks; which means we must use 5 miles separation.we also were losing coverage below three thousand feet throughout most of our airspace. This is expected. Ads-B aircraft did not show isr and coverage seemed to be much better. Being in fused mode gives a false sense of security when we are generally working on a single long range sensor. Our facility directives don't show any instructions for this type of outage. We were not instructed to use 5 miles nor were we instructed to use an alternate minimum vectoring altitude map that one would assume when radar coverage is lost below throughout a majority of the airspace. There are no procedures for what to do in the event of loss or scheduled outage of our radar.I recommend that the facility updates its standard operating procedures to show the steps that need to be taken as well as the coverage limitations during an outage. The facility should also do a better job communicating when scheduling a major outage. Our manager was notified of this outage well in advance but failed to communicate or ensure that the controllers expected to work during the outage were aware of the impact of the outage as well as the limitations of radar coverage and the stars system. The controllers were called by maintenance with a request to approve the outage; but denied the request after consulting with center if they could take the airspace. The controllers then received a call from our facility manager asking why the outage was denied. No direction was given in advance and the facility directives offered no guidance. A controller should be able to open the facility directives and find some type of contingency plan for outages; as well as specific directions; limitations and differences in separation responsibilities. It doesn't matter how many redundancies are in place if the user isn't aware of the restrictions or capabilities of each one. Our job is very black and white and there should not be any grey areas; especially when it comes to the equipment we rely on.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: FAR TRACON facility scheduled a radar outage. The Controllers were not advised or briefed about procedures to implement during the outage.

Narrative: Today our Airport Surveillance Radar (ASR) was scheduled to be taken out for maintenance for an expected time of 14 hours. The radar was taken out of service as scheduled. We were told we can continue to work the airspace and we were instructed to remain in FUSION [radar data received from other radar sites] mode. Since our local ASR Antenna was out; STARS facility was relying on Center's two radar sites; as well as ADS-B for the Fusion mode. All the aircraft we worked were showing 'ISR' on their data blocks; which means we must use 5 miles separation.We also were losing coverage below three thousand feet throughout most of our airspace. This is expected. ADS-B aircraft did not show ISR and coverage seemed to be much better. Being in FUSED mode gives a false sense of security when we are generally working on a single long range sensor. Our facility directives don't show any instructions for this type of outage. We were not instructed to use 5 miles nor were we instructed to use an alternate Minimum Vectoring Altitude map that one would assume when radar coverage is lost below throughout a majority of the airspace. There are no procedures for what to do in the event of loss or scheduled outage of our radar.I recommend that the facility updates its standard operating procedures to show the steps that need to be taken as well as the coverage limitations during an outage. The facility should also do a better job communicating when scheduling a major outage. Our manager was notified of this outage well in advance but failed to communicate or ensure that the controllers expected to work during the outage were aware of the impact of the outage as well as the limitations of radar coverage and the STARS system. The controllers were called by Maintenance with a request to approve the outage; but denied the request after consulting with Center if they could take the airspace. The controllers then received a call from our facility manager asking why the outage was denied. No direction was given in advance and the facility directives offered no guidance. A controller should be able to open the facility directives and find some type of contingency plan for outages; as well as specific directions; limitations and differences in separation responsibilities. It doesn't matter how many redundancies are in place if the user isn't aware of the restrictions or capabilities of each one. Our job is very black and white and there should not be any grey areas; especially when it comes to the equipment we rely on.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.