After discussion with uncle T I am posting here

as some of you may or may not know, I hail from Australia, land of CTAFs, uncontrolled airspace and not that many control towers

currently in the Scottish islands and surprised to find places such as benbecula, barra etc have ATC Towers (haven’t made it to westray airport yet but I suspect they do not)

in australia I doubt any of these places would- smallest I can think of with a tower is Albury (possibly due to a large amount of flight school traffic), Ayers Rock is uncontrolled, places like Horn Island and certain fields on the Tiwis that can exceed 50 movements per hour (I believe) at peak times also uncontrolled

so the question is, what’s the deal? Does the UK have uncontrolled airspace/uncontrolled fields at all, or are the limits just different or...what’s going on?!

furthermore. If you are an ATCO in say Barra, are you expected to multi role? Or is it a part time job? (i’d imagine they’d need at least 2 controllers but obviously don’t know this, could be some kind of fly in arrangement maybe?). And if it’s a multi role thing, what on earth does an ATCO do the rest of their time?

so many questions for a confused Australian!

(also what’s all this about a bear obsession?!)