Narrative:

We were told at the beginning of the shift that we would lose our ASR-9 (radar) for about 5-6 hours. It was a scheduled outage that tech-ops told us would have no effect on our traffic or operations; just that we would be feeding from the francis peak site. When the outage occurred; traffic at the time was slower. About 15 minutes into it; the first VFR arrival at slc came in from about 6 miles to the southeast of the airport. They had to be manually handed off as their primary target was no longer tracked. I never saw him on radar; only visually; as he continued to get closer to the field. It only got worse from there. An airliner was on arrival off the downwind. At about 6 miles out; he completely disappeared; tag and all; tracking for about 3 miles. He finally reacquired; but TRACON was very nervous as his initial track kept assuming he was headed toward the mountains until it all disappeared.20 minutes later; the traffic picked up with VFR transitions everywhere. 90% of the time these VFR's were nowhere to be seen on the radar and led to a very unsafe situation with helicopters. There were [also] subsequent landings on the east side of the airport. This was a very unsafe situation that the controllers did their best to keep everyone separated and safe. No one knew the rules for when the tags show isr (increased separation required); or how to clear aircraft into and out of the bravo without being truly radar identified. Next time for such a scheduled outage; can we not do it during a busy time? Maybe [we can do it] overnight to avoid some of the pitfalls of a beautiful VFR day.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: SLC Tower Controller reported controllers were not familiar with non-radar rules and procedures to follow during busy traffic made more complex due to a scheduled radar outage.

Narrative: We were told at the beginning of the shift that we would lose our ASR-9 (Radar) for about 5-6 hours. It was a scheduled outage that tech-ops told us would have no effect on our traffic or operations; just that we would be feeding from the Francis Peak site. When the outage occurred; traffic at the time was slower. About 15 minutes into it; the first VFR arrival at SLC came in from about 6 miles to the southeast of the airport. They had to be manually handed off as their primary target was no longer tracked. I never saw him on radar; only visually; as he continued to get closer to the field. It only got worse from there. An airliner was on arrival off the downwind. At about 6 miles out; he completely disappeared; tag and all; tracking for about 3 miles. He finally reacquired; but TRACON was very nervous as his initial track kept assuming he was headed toward the mountains until it all disappeared.20 minutes later; the traffic picked up with VFR transitions everywhere. 90% of the time these VFR's were nowhere to be seen on the radar and led to a very unsafe situation with helicopters. There were [also] subsequent landings on the east side of the airport. This was a very unsafe situation that the controllers did their best to keep everyone separated and safe. No one knew the rules for when the tags show ISR (Increased Separation Required); or how to clear aircraft into and out of the Bravo without being truly radar identified. Next time for such a scheduled outage; can we not do it during a busy time? Maybe [we can do it] overnight to avoid some of the pitfalls of a beautiful VFR day.

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.