Fall Arrest Training
Author: Levente Buzas
The ORCASat Earth station will be located on campus at the University of Victoria. This facility will consist of two parts. A network operations centre as part of the Centre of Aerospace Research, located in the Engineering Office Wing Room 148; and a gateway Earth station as part of the Propagation Laboratory in the Engineering Laboratory Wing, Room 402. This is illustrated below.
The network operations centre is responsible for the monitoring, supervision and maintenance of ORCASat, as well as TT&C activities with respect to this satellite. The gateway Earth station provides the network operations centre with access to ORCASat by facilitating traffic between the radio frequency (RF) link to/from the space station in LEO orbit and the network operations centre on the local network. Satellite operations are performed by operators in the network operations centre, who will upload time tagged telecommands to the spacecraft via the gateway Earth station. The command are then executed by the spacecraft’s On-Board Computer (OBC) at the appropriate time indicated by their time tag.
The network operations centre is already constructed and is ready to commence operations. However, the gateway Earth station is still in the construction phase. One key element of this is the antenna array, which will convert the guided radio waves from the coaxial feeders from the radio room into radio waves in free space. To provide as much access time to ORCASat as possible, this array will be installed on the Engineering Laboratory Wing roof, atop a 40’ steel lattice tower shown below.
Work safety regulations for the tower exist under federal and provincial legislation; to do work at height on these towers, formal training in work at height is required. To this end, the leads of the TT&C subsystem took a site specific two day course in fall protection, specific to the telecommunication industry. This course covered applicable legislation, the formal and informal planning and documentation required for work at height, as well as a wealth of practical information.
Practical work included safe ascent and descent on the towers, rigging for tension lines of various kinds, rigging for rescue, as well as tramming, haul systems, and companion rescue of injured workers. The course concluded with practical and written evaluation, which was successfully completed by both TT&C leads. Everything is now ready for work on the outside part of the gateway Earth station, which will commence as windows in the winter weather permit. Thanks again to the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Vera Industrial Access Inc. for making this training possible!
