Small Airports
A small airport or airfield is often unmanned, but a landing airplane still need to talk to Air Traffic Control elsewhere.
By using remote controlled radios, one operator can handle many airfields from one single location.
Working remotely
Remote controlled Airfield radio
Remote dispatcher
Small airports and airfields are in many cases unmanned. If they are far away from a large airport with Air Traffic Control, they need to have their own radio to handle safe landings and take aways.
This locally installed radio can be remote controlled from a totally different place. All you need is an IP connection.
Night time watch from one common dispatch site.
Common dispatcher - Night watch
In the example to the left, the three airports each have their local small system with one radio and one dispatch PC. The three systems are also remote controlled from one common dispatch site.
This set up can be very useful for example when there is low traffic at night time, but you still need to monitor what is happening at the remote airport. One common dispatcher can then handle all three airports.
The system can be expanded with more airports, dispatchers and also other types of radios.
Radio Types
Virtual Control head of the Icom IC-A120, remote controlled airband radio
Portable airband radio connected to a network interface
Fixed radios
The most common radio that we remote control, is the Icom IC-A120. It is remote controlled with audio and PTT plus channel change and squelch setting.
We can also remote Jotron radios with the same functions, and many other radio types, with only audio and PTT (fixed channel).
Portable radios
Most portable radios can also be remote controlled. But only for audio and PTT, no channel change.
The drawbacks with using a portable are power through the battery (it needs to stand in a charger) and a small antenna.