The first location for our 3 day field trip is located in Subic Bay free port zone, its

company name is VTMS, otherwise known as VESSEL TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT SYSTEM. A VTMS is a marine traffic monitoring system established by harbor or port authorities, similar to an air traffic control for aircrafts. Typical VTMS systems use radar, closed-circuit, television(CCTV), VERY HIGH FREQUENCY(VHF) Radiotelephony and Automatic Identification System(AIS) to keep track of vessel movements and provide navigational safety in a limited geographical location. From the outside, their office is a pure white building, with a good landscaping outside, it looks like it was newly renovated or maybe it is just a new structure, it was clearly maintained properly and has a good ambience. On the top right side of the building is an antenna and on top of the antenna is a rotating part. When we entered the building we noticed that there were very few people inside, maybe because it is a Saturday or maybe the company operation doesnt need very much people to operate the machines. The room that we went to is the control room, inside the control room there are notable objects inside. Initially you will first see that their vista is like a panoramic photograph. They have a rectangular window with approximately 8 feet length and 4 feet height. The view shows the waters, where ships pass through and dock, they are monitoring and Grande Island. As stated in the first paragraph, a VTMS helps to keep track of vessel movements and in order to control movement of ships in order to avoid collision. It controls route anchorage from one port to another. In order to do this, the control room needs monitors to provide information regarding the controlled area. The VTMS Subic is using FURUNO as a: (1) radar monitor and (2) destination monitor. A VTS traffic image is compiled and collected by means of advanced sensors such as Radar, Automatic Identification System (AIS), Automatic Direction Finders (ADF), CCTV, and Very High Frequency (VHF) or other cooperative systems and services. A modern VTMS integrates all of the information in a single operator working environment for ease of use and in order to allow for effective traffic organization and communication. This is what their FURUNO monitor does. All of these compilation and collection is done by their equipment; the FURUNO is a system integration of different equipment. The VTMS SUBIC specifically uses 3 methods of compiling and collecting of data, one is the AUTOMATIC RADAR PLANT AID (ARPA). The ARPA uses radar echos in order to detect the movement of vehicles. There are two radar echos that are shown in the monitor, first is the Unwanted Echos which are echos that reside within the land, second are the Wanted Echos which are the ship echos these help whether the ship is coming in the port or coming out of the port. The second method of information collection is the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which operates like a peer to peer connection, like a Bluetooth connection the ship and the VTMS must be paired initially to establish connection and once it is done communication from the ship to the VTMS station or vice versa is not a problem anymore. The third method is by the use of Radio Direction Finders(RDF), which uses the VERY HIGH FREQUENCY channel in order to communicate. The Radio Direction Finder only points the angle from where the ship is but not the exact location. It is used for determining the distress signal.

The AUTOMATIC RADAR PLANT AID(ARPA) Target provides speed, bearing, course and a detailed position, while for the AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM provides more detailed information such as, speed, bearing course, detailed position, type of carg The VTMS in order to protect safety created a $500 Fine for unregistered ships navigating in their covered location; this of course exempts emergency cases. A speed limit is also implemented when the ship is docking at the harbor, 5 nots is the speed limit. The dock is 13 meters deep, so up to 12m draft vessels are accommodated. The connection of the computers inside the master control room is a simple local area network. The computer is equipped with a Windows Xp Operating System. Furuno can handle up to 200 Automatic Radar Plant Aid (ARPA) targets: 1-50 Automatic acquisitions, and 51-200 manual acquisitions. The X-Band frequency is used for RADAR operations. When we got outside of the control room, beside it is the antenna, and a scanner radar.