Originally Posted by
ATC Watcher
Exactly the same thing occurred 45 yaers ago in my old ( major) Control centre. A worker using a backhoe dig and cut a bunch of cables just outside the centre , severing all telephone and radar lines ( that were all underground at the time ) .
Same during my career:
- On my first posting off course all coord comms to the adjacent civil centre lost due to back hoe activity just inside the main gate of the base.
- some years later as a SATCO had the main comms/coord fibre to the outside world cut during night flying by a D9 clearing scrub 15 Km off base dragging a fiberoptic cable to the point it snapped. He was devastated when we located him and told him what he'd done.
- next night he was clearing another patch of scrub 50km away and dragged the backup comms/coord fiberoptic cable to the point it snapped. Turns out, in both cases, the contractor had not buried the cable at the required depth, thinking, no doubt that it wouldn't matter.
- change of role, five years later as a civvie ATM systems manager thought it prudent to check redundancy for the coord link between two major centres. The glossy schematics clearly showed diverse paths between the two MDFs, one terrestrial and the other in space. found that the connection between the MDF and the antennas to bounce the signals to the satellite was in the same off site duct as the terrestrial link. On the drive back to the airport to head home and try and resolve the problem the senior tech manager and I saw a backhoe working within 2m of the duct containing the cables!!
Don't talk to me about redundancy and diverse paths!!
Gne