Queries: Press Office

Date: 6th May 2011

Reference: ZW

No.: 027/2011

Queries: Press Office

Contact: +49 8031 184-0

DFS – Deutsche Flugsicherung - German Air Traffic Control
Five large radio sites for "Ground to Air Communication"
Since 1994 the duty of air traffic control within the German Federal Republic airspace has been the responsibility of the Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH (DFS). At that the DFS became the successor to the government's Air Safety Office and its allied organisations.
Since that time the DFS has been cared for as a customer by the KATHREIN-Werke KG Berlin office. Up to the end of last year Dipl.- Ing. (FH) Frank Giesendorf and Dipl.-Ing. Wolfgang Keil in the Berlin office had been responsible for the installation, modification or extension of 134 DFS antenna systems.
In 2010, Kathrein Berlin received orders for five larger projects. Frank Giesendorf was the Project Manager for the radio sites at Frankfurt (Main) and Berlin-Brandenburg International airports, and also at Erfurt airport. His responsibilities included preparation of the quotations, procurement of the equipment from Head Office in Rosenheim, coordination of the installation with the appointed installation company, and finally the acceptance and calibration of the complete antenna equipment.
At the Frankfurt (Main) transmission station at the Berlin Air Lift memorial, the mast supplier Europoles erected two spun concrete masts. These were equipped with 12 m long additional masts for VHF ring antennas and UHF antennas as the topmost installation. The Frankfurt (Main) reception station and the emergency transmission and reception station are located on the roof of a service building and on the new control tower at the airport. The structural situation of both these buildings made for complex cable routing. Project Manager Frank Giesendorf worked closely with the installation company to determine the optimum solution for the cable routing.
A new transmission station at Selchow was handed over to DFS for the future large Berlin-Brandenburg International airport. This site, like the airport, is south of Berlin. In Selchow, all four spun concrete masts have been equipped with Kathrein antennas. The height of the concrete masts is 40 m. Therefore, as at the Frankfurt (Main) transmission station, a mobile crane was necessary for erecting the top masts and antennas. Cable bridges, supported on foundations, were installed for carrying the feeder cables from the masts to the service buildings (containers).
Despite bad weather conditions, the third mast at the Erfurt transmission station was handed over to the customer on time in December. Snow and high winds hampered the installation. The antenna equipment was manufactured to the usual high quality. Frank Giesendorf: "The installation was very demanding. However due to the punctual arrival of the antenna materials, the committed work of the installation engineers and not least the good support from the DFS staff on site, the system was handed over and accepted on time."
Caption 1:
Installation by crane at the DFS Selchow transmission station.
Caption 2:
Project Manager Frank Giesendorf in front of the finished DFS installation.

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