Gang of 4 at Babcock Appledore as latest ship for Irish Naval Service nears completion

Glenn tweaking in the MCR

Commissioning work is ramping up at Babcock's Appledore shipbuilding facility as the LE JAMES JOYCE, the 2nd of 3 OPV's for the Irish Naval Service nears sea trials.  MES has responsibility for the supply and installation of the navigation, military and civil communications, internal communications and the electro-optical fire control system.  In other words MES is providing a complete mission system.  At the time of writing we have 4 MES commissioning technicians on board augmented by specialist engineers for the Raytheon ring laser gyro system and the GE-IP fire control system. Both these companies have provided great support throughout the project as have all our suppliers. And indeed our customers Babcock Marine and the Irish Naval Service are a pleasure to work with. This really has been a team project we have felt proud to be part of and the ships are superb!

The 1st ship LE Samuel Beckett dries out alongside the outfitting berth

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MES Secures Navigation and Communications Contracts for 13 Brazilian Newbuild Drillships

GE Power Conversion’s maritime business has awarded contracts to MES for the supply and installation of turnkey navigation, communication and internal communications packages on board 13 new drillships.

These vessels are in build as part of the current phase of the Brazilian oil and gas field exploration by Brazilian energy corporation Petrobras. The oil and gas giant is searching for hydrocarbons up to 300 kilometers (km) off the coast of Brazil, in rock formations up to 5 km below the seabed and in water depths of up to 2,000 meters. The pre-salt layer holds an estimated 10–16 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

Anti Piracy Surveillance System

Following an attack by Pirates on a drill ship in the Indian Ocean, Marine Electronics Systems (MES) Ltd was sub-contracted by Cobham to design, install and commissioning a 360 degree surveillance system onboard the deepwater drill ship Saipem 10000.

The available budget and timescale for the project was tight. From initial enquiry to project completion and acceptance took only 7 weeks including a busy 6 days installing and commissioning the equipment onboard the ship which was located 150 miles off the coast of Mozambique.

ISO9001 - Quality management counts!!

Rigid adherence to quality control procedures recently prevented a potentially embarrassing non conformity. Fortunately the incorrectly picked thermal camera was identified by eagle eyed packing staff.

Paul from stores commented, "we realised the dome was out of tolerance when it didn't fit in the recyclable packaging material!"

The MES quality manager is taking the matter up with the HR department to get to the bottom of the mix up.

MES presents at the Griffon Hoverwork User Meeting

Hovercraft Owners/Operators from around the world met in September at Griffon Hoverwork’s manufacturing site in Southampton, UK for the annual Griffon Hovercraft user group conference.

The meeting provides an opportunity for hovercraft users to get together to exchange views and ideas on the best operating practices for these specialized but versatile craft.  It also provides Griffon Hoverwork with a forum to keep customers updated on new technologies in the field of hovercraft manufacture and operation.  Mike Whitlock was invited to present on some of the latest electronic technologies finding applications in hovercraft.

20 years on and the MES Navtalk still going strong

As a system integrator, MES generally uses third party products.  However, to help with bridge integration of such products we developed the Navtalk data splitter unit in partnership with Andy Fairgrieve of Aditel. Andy is a great designer of interface units and the Navtalk has proved this with its remarkable reliability.  MES has now supplied thousands of Navtalks into the field.  The product, which was first conceived in 1992 was designed to enable the output for a single GPS to be split to provide positional information to the new GMDSS radio equipment which, through digital selective calling could for the first time automatically transmit the position of a ship in distress.

MES completes two bridge systems in the US at the same time in the same shipyard

Ollie Haselden and Richard Collett are just nearing completion of the commissioning of the navigation and communication systems on 2 offshore support vessels in Florida's Eastern Shipbuilding.  Another example of a successful collaborative project between GE Energy Power Conversion and MES.  MES was subcontracted by GE to provide the bridge equipment and GMDSS and internal communications systems.   The ships HARVEY CHAMPION AND KEITH COWAN will be handed over to US operators Seacor Marine and Harvey Gulf in the near future.