new tower yssy
 

Driving along johnny holmes drive beside the airport there seems to be a new radar tower going up near the beach .Anyone know what its going to look at or what its going to do.

My understanding is that it's possibly a new surface movement type radar, but I don't believe it's necessarily for aircraft.

There has been talk over the past couple of years that they will be fitting vehicles with a transponder type device. The vehicles that are of primary interest would be those that frequent the taxiway and runway complex, such as ARFF Tenders, aircraft tugs, airline staff training vehicles and SACL Airport Operations cars. I presume that most vehicles would transmit their own identity, which may be useful during periods of low visibility

I believe some, if not all, of the ARFF tenders have the devices fitted already, with callsigns appearing on ASD-B(?) transmissions as 'TENDA5' for Tender 5 etc.

I'll see if I can find out more next week.

Big brother is watching you, Nigel. :p

No more hanging out at the Hook watching the fireworks then Nige?

It's a temporary replacement for the current SMR (Surface movement radar) while new technology equipmnent is mounted on the new Tower.
The new technology will I gather provide the vehicle tracking that Nigel mentioned together with aircraft tracking.

https://www.airservicesaustralia.com...sup/s7-h32.pdf

might give more details! If that link doesn't work go to
https://www.airservicesaustralia.com.../aip.asp?pg=50 and read AIP SUP H32/07

I thought the new tower would be used to monitor the movements of all the shoppers in the new retail areas that will inevitably spring up around the airport. ;)

Don't need a tower for that, you can just use the contactless smartcard in all the new passports. All that is required is to position readers based where ever you want to track shoppers and you can follow an individual from arrival to departure. :)