Radar, What Is It Good For?

[Niemöller]

This may have been answered long long ago, but when I searched the forum, I couldn't find anything on point.

I'm a newb to SH3. I'm on my 34th patrol and am sailing in June '44 based in L'Orient (Don't ask what my realism level is--it's low. What can I say. . . I like to point, shoot, and blow ships up.)

What are the practical uses of Radar in SH3? I've already looked at wiki, for those who will tell me to RTFM. I've used radar during fog and stormy weather in order to get a fix on merchants and warships. But can I use radar for targeting without getting a visual sight of the enemy unit? I'd rather not plow through a thunderstorm, locate a C2, zero in on it with radar, and approach to 350m before I am able to launch a torp. Is there any way to fire and lock in on a target with radar without having to see the target visually? And I guess I can only use Radar when surfaced, correct? I'm real paranoid about using Radar anyway because it seems like a beacon advertising my position to the enemy and letting any DDs nearby get a fix on me.

Besides targeting, are there any other clever uses for Radar?

[tycho102]

Mainly, it serves like the light on a bug-zapper. You turn on your radar, wait for the planes to start circling, then zap them with the flak.

The best way to use your radar is sporatically. Turn it on for a few sweeps, then turn it back off. You need to use it especially in heavy weather, but you should also be using your hydrophones. Dive and listen every 3-4 hours, then surface and sweep twice every 30 minutes or so. You shouldn't be using your radar for attack approaches. It's only for searching, or it'll get you killed right quick.

And if you are intercepting a known convoy, then you shouldn't be using it at all. Those escorts will charge right out to meet you if you flip on your radar; use your hydrophones and plotting skills, instead.

[Dowly]

Well, you can detect enemies outside of your visual ranger without diving to make a hydrophone check.

In the later years of the war, the radar is useless because:
a) You are submerged most of the time
b) Allied radar detectors can pick you up

Hope this helps.

[tbarak]

It only works on the surface too. I find it's good in the early part of the war in thick fog since you can remain surfaced and get a fix on the target without submerging. Still it's field of view is tiny and using the radar is clunky. After 13 patrols I finally figured out how to use it manually and I got pretty excited once I saw that first blip. Still letting the radar op do his job and watching the map for those grey silhouettes works like a charm in thick fog.

[VonHelsching]

Besides targeting, are there any other clever uses for Radar?

No, but you're not supposed to know that in 1939-1945. You're supposed to attract attention and die. Sad but true.

I'm using it anyway.

[Scorpius]

I have never actually used it. Never need to. Maybe i will give it a try on this career. Come to think of it, i have never used it so i will have to learn how it is spose to work.

Does it work like the hydrophones? You turn the wheel to locate contacts? Or is it like real radar in DC where you have a circular window with a beam sweeping in a circle?

[tbarak]

I think you have two sweep modes, auto and manual, and yes you can move the wheel around. Good luck seeing the blip on the screen - it seems small and real intermittent. If you blink you'll miss it, its that fast. It's a pretty tight beam. Better to watch the numeric readout since its easier to see. Unless of course you can keep the target within the 10 - 15 degree beam which I've found to be pretty hard.

[irish1958]

With proper housing you can warm up a muffin.
irish1958

[Captain Affenschwanz]

I'm on my 25th patrol in March of 1944 and never bothered to have a radar installed on any my boats. I believe the negatives far outweigh the postives on this issue... Radar is a magnet for planes, warships and death.

I hunt by sound.

[Scorpius]

Anyone care to post images of the radar?

[Manock]

Well - its 1943 & have the 360 degree radar, and I use it mostly defensively when Im in a hurry to get to my hunting grounds by traveling surfaced at night. It will pick up planes at around the 15,000 meter or 5nm giving me time to submerge.

Plus so far, unescorted merchants dont seem to have radar detectors yet so I use it to walk up to merchants, and sink them. Hurts my hand though.

About radar. Radar detecting works on the X2 principle. Since a radar beam has to have the strength to bounce off a target, & return to the transmitter. Radar strength is x2 its range. So if your radar unit has a range as here of 15k meters, its detectability is x2 or 30km or 10nms. Which really isnt all that much to worry about as far as concerning yourself as being a BEACON SHOUTING out your location.

Destroyers all ready know your out there. Giving them 10 mile notice isnt that great of a vulnerability. Plus once they get close enough at around 4500meters you can just dive out of there.

Plus their undetectable centrimetric radar has long since found your boat outside your meager units detection.

SO WHAT IM SAYING IS - You might as well use it.

Manock

[Keelbuster]

Well - its 1943 & have the 360 degree radar, and I use it mostly defensively when Im in a hurry to get to my hunting grounds by traveling surfaced at night. It will pick up planes at around the 15,000 meter or 5nm giving me time to submerge.

Plus so far, unescorted merchants dont seem to have radar detectors yet so I use it to walk up to merchants, and sink them. Hurts my hand though.

About radar. Radar detecting works on the X2 principle. Since a radar beam has to have the strength to bounce off a target, & return to the transmitter. Radar strength is x2 its range. So if your radar unit has a range as here of 15k meters, its detectability is x2 or 30km or 10nms. Which really isnt all that much to worry about as far as concerning yourself as being a BEACON SHOUTING out your location.

Destroyers all ready know your out there. Giving them 10 mile notice isnt that great of a vulnerability. Plus once they get close enough at around 4500meters you can just dive out of there.

Plus their undetectable centrimetric radar has long since found your boat outside your meager units detection.

SO WHAT IM SAYING IS - You might as well use it.

Manock

That's some good, sober talk. Does the crew pick up aircraft contacts on radar and break time compression?

Kb

[tycho102]

With proper housing you can warm up a muffin.
irish1958

You are correct, even without the "proper housing". I don't know any specifics of German radar in mid-1940's, but I would guess 5kw. 5 kilowatts of power output (without a fluid-cooled magnetron) is about the limit. Since the rotating antennas absolutely couldn't have put that out on later versions, it probably dropped to 1kw. Put it on a long dowl rod, and you could cook a weenie in 10 minutes. It'd warm the muffin, but I'd bet the crew would have appreciated meat more than bread. :)

And the detectability range is far greater than 2x, even with radio-tubes. Closer to 6x, but the game's physics borders are 20km.

[BettingUrlife]

Well, you can detect enemies outside of your visual ranger without diving to make a hydrophone check.

In the later years of the war, the radar is useless because:
a) You are submerged most of the time
b) Allied radar detectors can pick you up

Hope this helps.

In the game do Allied radar detectors really work though? I was in a light fog at night once , shadowing a convoy and flicked it on looking for a blip. Got the blip and adjusted course, no escort came to track me down. Okay, put radar on continuously, still no escorts. I guess the easy work around would be to play as it would be done historically and keep it turn off. But if the programmers didn't programme it correctly ...

Anyway, anyone else found that Allies don't detect radar very well?

[Manock]

Radar detectability is NOT X6 is signal strength. It is X2. But since this is a hobby, & Im not willing to pull out the formulas I wont be commenting on this any further.

But I like the 20km detection balance if thats correct. Arial detection would be greatest at the above stated 30k but much less at sea level, and sea wave turbulence would always be altering it, and I would put it at about 9k or 10.

So if your saying the simulation model uses 20k in all detection environments, I suppose this is a balanced simple approach to the issue.

[dertechie]

Somebody mentioned figuring out how to use radar manually. How do you do that? I've tried to use the wheel, but that doesn't work.

I'd check the community manual, but the site isn't working for me right now. I just get a blank page.

[tbarak]

You hit the "r" key to sit in the radar station then you just mouse click the on button until you see the green scan lines come on. You can only activate it while surfaced. Make sure the selector is for sweep and put your cursor on the numbers on the wheel, not the wheel itself. It should start to move around. Then keep turning the wheel until you become frustrated that you're not seeing anything then let your radarman take over.

From what I can see you have to have your bow pointed almost straight at the target since the field of view is very narrow. I don't really understand the wheel since I thought the radar was fixed and that you had to turn the boat around to increase the sweep. But I don't usually even notice the "blip", rather I see the numbers (indicating distance) turn so I know I have a contact. Otherwise keep an eye on the map and you'll see grey target outlines instead of red, blue or green. If all else fails, click the sonorman and activate the radar that way.

[dertechie]

So it's very similar to the hydrophone, just a smaller area that you can click to operate in. I think I'll just let the radioman operate it.

[Karl-Heinz Jaeger]

Radar! Huh! Yeah! What is it good for??!

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Say it again, y'all!!

Personally I find RADAR more of a hindrance than a help, especially loading up a save game and forgetting to order it turned off. May as well phone ze Tommies up and tell them where I am. I've only ever used it a couple of times to locate a convoy I was intercepting and even then it was switched off as soon as I got a contact. More trouble than it's worth.

:ping: :ping: :ping:

[Threadfin]

I find radar useful, it's a tool like anything else.

I'm not convinced radar can be detected as easily in SH3 as everyone thinks. People are quick to say it's a beacon, but how has this been proven in SH3? How can a player tell it's their radar that's been detected and not their boat detected by the enemy's radar? A few days ago I was on patrol with Fumo-30 west of Gibraltar in October of '43. We picked up a destoyer on radar at about 7500 meters or so and were not detected. He sailed on oblivious to us as we submerged.

I find radar useful mostly from the time it appears until the snorkel is available. Since the boat has to be surfaced to recharge the radar is nice, especially in bad weather to give increased detection range so you don't get surprised by destroyers charging your boat out of the fog. The Fumo-30 does a good job of detecting aircraft too, and gives a few additional seconds of warning.

Radar is also useful for making surfaced attacks in soup. It assists in making end-arounds.

Once the snorkel is installed I rarely run on the surface so the window of usefulness for me is only about a year.

[HunterICX]

Well...Radar is at the Radio man right?
coz i have a question about that one.
How in earth name do you open an Radio message? coz when i revieve one and click the Guy and ask to open the report he sais nothing has been revieved????

[Sailor Steve]

Press 'M'.

[HunterICX]

Why did I lost my Manual :damn:

Lot of House movements but finally be bought an House so....it must be in one of the 30 Boxed in the basements....*sigh*

Thx :up:

[Ping Jockey]

How can I get more Radio messages sent to me??? The Radar is of no use most of the time.

[Manock]

The game is pretty good at creating targest for you to sink. More so than probably in reality. Ive been cruising around in the middle of the war, & am amazed that lone merchants have the audacity to make a run for it unescorted with me out here.

One thing not particularly advertised is Uboats could recve messages from the fatherland while submerged to my experimentation of 20 meters. Below 20 meters you dont get contact reports.

Doentiz had a powerful ground based transmitter tweaked to low frequency in the same theory as the Extremely Low Frequency ('Elf' transmitters') used to communicate with modern submarines today.

You however must surface to transmit. You can only recve while submerged.

So Uboats would make contact reports, and Doenitz would retransmit them out on his low frequency transmitter making those red sighting reports appear on your map.

Which brings up another point, I disagree that turning off these contact reports in the game setting makes the sim more realistic. To the contrary, it makes the sim more artificially difficult only relying on your own sensors to find shipping.

[Sailor Steve]

Ping Jockey, what mods are you using? The supermods all use different forms of the 20/20 mod, which greatly reduced the number of lone ships and also the number of reports about them.

Manock, I agree that having no contacts is less real than having some. I use the above-mentioned 20/20 mod. It reduces contacts greatly, but I still run into more than enough.

[tbarak]

Yeah once you know the routes and lanes contact reports become redundant. Although just sitting in the midst of the shipping lanes does get boring after a while and it is fun chasing a large convoy contact report out in the middle of nowhere.

[Rosencrantz]

Radar, for what is it good for?

:hmm:

To get yourself bombed?

-RC-

[Knotical]

Radar! Huh! Yeah! What is it good for??!

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Say it again, y'all!!

Dang it Karl, I wanted to do that! You beat me too it.

:doh: