The new training station that started its activity in early November is the pride of the coast guard (of the Gulf of Finland). The border and coastguard school trains coastguards who will work on the coastguard stations and ships. The students at the station keep in touch with reality as "the real action" happens right next to them.
Ye Olde machinery to the museum
Porkkala controlls crossing of the sea frontier with technical instruments, does passport checks and takes part in sea rescue operations. The duty officer at Porkkala leads the units of his area to identification operations and to other tasks. The command of the sea rescue operations of the Gulf of Finland happens at the coast guard main center at Katajanokka, in Helsinki.
The control center in Porkkala has three surveillance desks of which two are in the use of the coast guard and one in the use of the school. In addition, one desk is in a classroom on the first floor of the Border- and Coastguard School. It is possibly to direct any of the system's highresolution pictures to any of the monitors, video projectors and wide screens from any of the desks.
The schooling network has been differentiated from the actual monitoring system, but as long as their rights of use allow it, the users may select real sea situations and other pictures to the school's screens through the Black Box matrix system.
It's often playfully said that the old machinery belongs in the museum. At Porkkala this is all true though as the old surveillance desk was actually moved to the coastguard museum.
Fast execution
- This was the coastguard's own acquiring and we had the possibility to set tight technical demands for the system, says the surveillance and communications leader, First Lieutenant Veli Salminen of the technical office at the headquarters of the Finnish coastguard. - We made the decision of the acquisition at the end of September and Black Box started installing the equipment in October. The time of delivery was very reasonable for us.
- The Porkkala system is in a way a "miniaturized version" of the Katajanokka "K6" headquarters, continues Salminen. - The realization has been done using the newest technology that among other things doesn't require as much space and offers room for expansion. The expansion might become topical soon as the station of Suomenlinna will be moved here in the beginning of June. Large international administration systems will also be realized with this very same technology.
- The technical features, technical support and the reliability were the key reasons why we chose this system, emphasises Salminen. - Our experience with the K6 system that Black Box delivered for us nearly two years ago has been good, the system has functioned without any problems. This in part suggested that we should choose Black Box as the deliverer of the new system. The most important reason was, however, the features of the system. Also the control center solutions of the future will be carried out on this basis.
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The coast guard of the Gulf of Finland has built a whole new coast guard training station at Porkkala. The whole building along with the communications equipment, the computers and surveillance equipment of the control room and the AV-machinery with its control system are new. A lot of technical demands existed and a new generation Black Box system was chosen for the control center's guidance system.