Remember when I told you about 4 radar sites being assigned to one sort box? The first in line was termed "preferred," and the second "supplemental," and the 3rd and 4th were there only to cover for the first two if they were off the air.
Well, a radar site assigned to provide supplemental coverage will basically wait in the background and only show its target symbol if the preferred radar loses the target for some reason. Such a reason could be that the aircraft is below the line-of-sight coverage of the radar that is assigned as preferred in that sort box. In the above example, the southeast bound low-altitude aircraft is crossing into a sort box that has its preferred coverage assigned to radar B (shaded red). However, being as this aircraft is a tracked aircraft (full data block), once it gets too low to be seen by radar B, radar A will automatically fill in for B. That's right. In the red shaded box, the yellow shaded radar will fill in. This technique provides automatic and uninterrupted radar service for this tracked aircraft.
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