Comms and VCCS equipment in the UK

[Mooncrest]

Morning all,

I'd be interested to know how far the use of electronic voice switching equipment has spread across UK ATC units. My local airport changed over to the Schmid ICS200 system about three and a half years ago and I gather the same system is used at most NATS sites and a few non-NATS sites. Do any airports still use the old lever key and lamp or push button RDCE consoles ?
Old equipment I know but it's what I like best, even though the modern touchscreen consoles offer more flexibility.

Would be good to hear what controllers, assistants, engineers and even managers think about this subject.

All the best.;)

[chevvron]

Prior to the Schmid system we had the MOD pattern Mascot Mincomm which was push button and absolute rubbish as it was designed originally for police and ambulance control rooms and adapted for ATC use. One nasty trick it had was to transmit conversations carried out on the 'on channel' intercom; not all the time, just random ones, hence you had to physically phone clearances between tower and radar rather than just use intercom. Another trick was that if set up per spec, your mike was always 'live'. Oh and if you tried to connect or cross couple two channels, on first transmission you got an 'echo' effect which would continue until you cancelled the 'conect'.

[anotherthing]

VCCS system at TC Swanwick.

Over one year now since the move -

Still not allowed to cross couple more than 2 frequencies (even though one of the selling points of the kit is the ability to cross couple multi frequencies)

Cross coupling drops out regularly even when used on just 2 frequencies (and problem seems to be happening more regularly). You get no alarm/attention grabber to tell you that cross coupling has dropped out - you just start getting transmissions stepped on, then you notice the 'C' indicator on the panel has gone...

(lack of or poor) Sidetone issues - to the extent that you cannot tell if your headset is working at times - we have had a note on 'first brief' (EBS) about clipped transmissions... if we had a decent sidetone, we might not have as many clipped transmissions!!

One year down the line, lots of money spent, still no stable system. Not the NATS engineers fault, just poor equipment.

Hopefully by the time NPC gets kitted out, the problems will be eradicated... don't hold your breath.

The actual functionality etc is great, just a shame it has these other faults...

[Comms Boy]

VCS system at AC Swanwick
Frequentis 3020-S used for AC
Frequentis 3020-X used for international gateway,
From an engineering point of view it's very nice, very reliable, been working for years. Nice company to deal with:ok:
Lots of old kit still used around the UK, MASCOT still popular at MOD sites.
Regards
P

[forget]

:confused: From an engineering point of view it's very nice, very reliable, been working for years.

(lack of or poor) Sidetone issues - to the extent that you cannot tell if your headset is working at times

So which is it?

[goldfrog]

http://static.pprune.org/images/smilies/confused.gif Quote:
From an engineering point of view it's very nice, very reliable, been working for years.
Quote:
(lack of or poor) Sidetone issues - to the extent that you cannot tell if your headset is working at times
So which is it?
Both are true because they are about different systems, quote 1 re AC VCS, quote 2 about TC VCCS