Copperchase: Air Traffic Control Systems

Despite their sleek and slim appearance, Air Traffic Control towers house a vast amount of equipment critical to the operation of a busy airport. Much of this equipment is housed on different levels within the tower construction itself; in dedicated equipment rooms and radar rooms, rather than in the visual control room at the top in order to maximise operational space in a restricted environment and to reduce the weight, power and ventilation requirements for the operational deck. A vast range of critical data has to be transmitted between the equipment and operator displays in order for the air traffic controllers to carry out their jobs effectively and safely.

Copperchase, one of the UK’s leading suppliers to the Air Traffic Control industry was recently involved in the supply of the new ATC Data System to Jersey Airport during a recent £6m rebuilding project managed by NATS. The new air traffic control building and tower help meet the demands for increased capacity at Jersey Airport and control the Channel Islands airspace.

One of the problems faced by Copperchase was to connect an array of computers located several floors below the operators’ desks in the visual control room at the top of the 39 metre high tower. Solutions were provided by the use of Scene Double Keyboard, Video and Mouse (KVM) extenders that provide bidirectional communication for audio and video signals to the eight operators and control commands from their peripheral devices and USB accessories back to the computers; over Cat7 cable distances of up to 110 metres. In all, 21 Windows-based servers provided information to 8 operators using touch screen monitors covering meteorological conditions, operational frequencies, contact details and a wealth of other critical information.

Peter Gutteridge, Senior Project Engineer for Copperchase evaluated and selected the Scene Double KVM extenders: “All the equipment is critical to the safe operation of the airport and we need to ensure that selected devices are of the utmost reliability and do not require constant attention in order to work on a 24/7 schedule. Scene Double’s extenders have proven themselves for this purpose and we like theway that we can reach the UK-based engineers who designed and build the products very easily and quickly, thereby giving us enhanced confidence in the range.”

Ray Gordon, Founder and Director of Scene Double comments: “All our products are designed and manufactured in the UK to stringent levels of quality and reliability in our own factory. We place a massive emphasis on the level of support that we offer to ensure that they surpass customer requirements, particularly in this type of application.”