KVM extenders for smooth operations at Jersey Airport

Jersey, UK

The Customer

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 located 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.

This maximizes the operational space in a restricted environment and reduces the weight, power and ventilation requirements for the operational deck. As a result 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.

The Challenge

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 m high tower.

The Solution

Solutions were provided by the use of IHSE’s Keyboard, Video and Mouse (KVM) extenders, supplied by UK distributor Scene Double. These extenders 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 Cat 7 cable distances of up to 110 meters. In all, 21 Windows-based servers provide information to the operators using touch screen monitors covering meteorological conditions, operational frequencies, contact details and a wealth of other critical information.

The benefit

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. IHSE’s extenders have proven themselves for this purpose and we like the way that we can talk to support engineers in the UK, thereby giving us enhanced confidence in the range.”

Ray Gordon, Founder and Director of Scene Double comments: “All the products are designed and manufactured to stringent levels of quality and reliability. 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.”