sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Security, Alarms and Paging An interesting job I was on...

Airport has a new control tower built and the old tower needs to be torn down. Only thing is, they have a crash line which was basically just a cable running directly from the old tower to the Fire Station. If there is an incident they pick up the phone which activates a buzzer at the station. When staff at the station picks up one of the crash phones the audio is also output via the PA system. It was an ingenious setup since someone basically installed a Telephone Line Simulator on the cable the connected the tower to the FS. The FAA wanted to keep this setup (the FAA chief at the tower is a super sharp guy) and see if it could be simplified. We figured a ringdown circuit from the LEC (they manage the airport PBX) would do the trick. Went to swing everything over and it works flawlessly. Really just wanted to share something that I thought was interesting. It is funny how, for me at least, in the back of my mind it was always apparent that, simple as this is, it has to work first time every time. I always put my heart into my work but I swear I ran my cable just a little bit neaater and made my connection just a tinier bit more secure. FAA had to play with the DB levels on his crash I mentioned my feelings to the FAA chief and he replied that was how he and his staff had to think about in their careers everyday and he sensed "I was that type of guy" which was why he contracted me. Again, no point to this except to share over coffee...

Well done!!!

Great job but if that control tower is using the TransTel TDS which is approved for FAA use then you don't need the ring down from phone company use the hot dial thats already in the system.

@ metelcom - I never really got to see what was in the control tower end. The FAA rep was pretty adamant that he wanted a ring down circuit. I think this is because there is another leg on the ringdown to another fire station or emergency responder. I was only to concentrate on the fire station.