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for the ‘follow me’ cars which guide incoming aircraft to their stand. Tree AVL consoles will be supported. And the system could be extended further to track not only all vehicles but airport staff too, even inside the terminals. Tis could become part of a complex system for dispatching and crisis management based on the Aksel console application, with features such as dynamic regrouping.
Shifting boxes Half an hour’s drive from Gdansk – beyond the popular seaside resort of Sopot – lies Gdynia, a modern industrial city with container ports, car ferry terminal and an important naval base. At the Baltic Container Terminal (BCT), there’s a buzz of activity as trucks come and go through the main gate, while a big container ship, its decks piled high with steel boxes, is being unloaded at the quayside. Here, too, a TETRA radio system is helping to keep the wheels of business turning, this time with TETRA infrastructure from Damm Cellular. For a panoramic view of the operation, Michal Kuzajczyk, marketing manager of BCT, escorts me to the top of one of the giant gantry cranes which unload the ships. We clamber up steel ladders and squeeze into a tiny elevator before emerging on to a platform close to the crane operator’s cabin. Looking along the quay, we can see another crane lifting containers from the ship, one by one, and lowering them towards the ground. “All of the workers use the radio for voice communication”, Michal explains. We’ve got radios in our trucks, of course, and handheld radios everywhere.” Far below us, the container is manoeuvred on to a flat-bed truck and then driven the short distance to its predetermined destination in the container stacks, where a straddle crane will lift it and deposit it on the correct pile. Later it will be collected to continue its onward journey by road or from the nearby railway sidings. Tese carefully choreographed moves are managed by continual communication between the truck at ground level and the driver of the crane and the operator of the straddle crane in the container park. “Tere are the guys with the walkie-talkies who are controlling the whole process”, Michal explains. “One is located under the ship-to-shore gantry and another who is helping this gantry operator to pick up the right container is located on the deck of the ship or in the bay – it depends where the container is coming from. We call that kind of group a gang. Tey are all in the same talkgroup.”
Work groups, talkgroups Each gantry has its own gang, and the use of TETRA’s talkgroup capability ensures that the gang does not mistakenly receive instructions meant for some other gang. “In conditions like this, when the wind is not very
strong and the weather is fine, they are doing 32–33 containers per hour”, says Michal, watching the work proceed. “But in poor weather conditions they might do 26 per hour. A ship of this size will bring around 2000 containers – so we will handle this ship within about two days. We work 24 hours.”
Issue 14 2013 TE TRA TODAY 27
Cabin of a gantry crane: at present, TETRA is used solely for voice calls (a Cassidian mobile control head can be seen at left). A separate narrowband radio system is used for communicating with the mobile computers. Inset: TETRA radio control head mounted in the crane cabin
Productivity is measured in moves, he adds; each move is a relocation of the container, irrespective of whether it is being placed on the ship or taken from the ship. Every vehicle in the terminal is equipped with radio.
More than 50 vehicles are fitted with TETRA mobiles and there are 70 handheld radios, all from Cassidian. Surprisingly, the crane-drivers also make use of some very low-tech communications too, in the form of CB radio, the trucker’s friend. “It is official”, comments Michal, with a grin, explaining that CB was a pragmatic solution to the lack of radio contact between BCT’s crane operators and outside truck drivers entering the terminal to collect or deliver containers. “When the truck comes to the terminal, they don’t have any radio communication with the guy who is uploading the truck here”, he explains. “Every trucker has got a CB radio, so we just put in a CB radio for guys who were operating the cranes, and they now can communicate!
A ship is unloaded at BCT in Gdynia, Poland’s second busiest container terminal. Its 800-metre quay can handle up to six ships, but an extension now being planned will handle larger vessels carrying up to 12000 containers
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