Each of us in the Communication team works 2 shifts a day in the tower. Today for example I worked the morning shift with Pete and the afternoon shift with Crispin then Callum and Crispin took over for the evening shift and Pete had “second night gash” in the evening.

A typical shift in the tower will involve flight following and base radio communications.

The computer on the left is used for AFTN flight planning. This is where we submit the AFTN flight plan intentions and update departure and arrival times for each flight. Next week we will be changing to the AFPEX web-based flight planning application https://ts1.flightplanningonline.co.uk/ instead of the UDP based installed Copperchase AFTN client software. This will make the client PC easier to administer and eliminate the  need for a dedicated established network link through to Swanick NATS centre.

Also on the left side of the desk are our antenna choosers and rotator.
We have 4 HF antennas. A North-South, an East-West, a Rotatable log periodic and an emergency HF. The emergency antenna is connected directly to our batter powered iCOM ic- 78 which we only use during power downs. The other 3 antenna we can switch between our 3 HF transmitters.

The main console of the desk has our 2 skanti HF sets and the marine and aero VHF units.

The right hand side PC we use to pickup weather observations from the internet and
intranet.

On the right corner of the desk we have our Iridium and Cisco VOIP phones.