You're supposed to if they are low enough. My SD radar has been picking up aircraft and the ones skimming the waves have shown up on SJ as well.

Humm these ones were a couple hundreths of metres high :hmmm:, I watched them in external view. At first when I got the contact I thought it was a ship, then saw how quickly it moved and that could be nothing except an airplane. Or an UFO :88)

The width is not all that narrow of the beam and it does follow the ship as it rocks back and forth. I think tracking planes up in the region of 2000' at range is not wrong. You'd have to compare the radar pattern height in the sensors vs. some real world data.

Fred you have a point there, but I was not questioning if it is real or not. If the RFB guys put it there intentionally, I can be sure it is realistic. What I actually wanted to know is just if it only happened to me, or if it happened to everyone and if it was intentional :88)

Is anyone having any problems with deaf hydrophone operators? My sonar guy doesn't pick up and report ships until we're practically underneath them. When I take the trouble to report a ship myself the operator will then follow the contact, but only for a few minutes until he declares that he's lost it. This happens with the watch officer assisting in the Conning Tower.

I've played a fair few patrols with RFB now, but I've taken to manning the hydrophones every hour when underwater which really shouldn't be necessary. Is anyone else experiencing this?

I'm running RFB2 + the patch + the fog fix + RSRD + the patch


Fantastic mod by the way. :up:

The historical documentation on SJ does give detection ranges on aircraft (5 miles at 500 feet altitude), and the patrol reports also have notes about the SJ picking up aircraft contacts, so yeah, it's definitely historically correct.

The "deaf hydrophone operator" issue is one with a long history, dating back to SH3. I'll try to see, though, if the issue can be improved for RFB.

What year are you in you career, '42? Before I 'purchased' a new hydrophone (the one which installs on the deck and looks like a modern 'radar') I got the same deaf sonar guy thing. Even though I could hear ships when manually listening, the sonar guy couldn't hear them until they were close or on top of us. On second patrol, when I installed it he reported contacts normally.

That's a good point. WCA only has a max range of 7,000 yards, while JP-1 has a max range of 10,000 yards.

Yes Del Monty, I have the same problem. I'm happy to read that a new version of hydrophone will solve this.

What I don't understand is the range of detection of my operator. He reports contacts when they are approximatively at 3800 yards. Is that a historical range ? Sometimes it works better, sometimes worse. Is there a relation with the sea state ? What can affect the detection by hydrophone ?

Thanks guys for your help.

Ah I see. I haven't progressed beyond Summer 1942 so that must be the problem. Since I can pick up the contacts manually, presumably there's some disconnect between the correct range of AI hydrophones and the incorrect range of manual hydrophones?

Even with JP-1 I got deaf sonar guy bug, for the first time in SH4 lol. I was tracking a Hog Island near Palau Islands in 12 m/s winds, and sank it from 1500 yards. Sonar guy never reported the contact, even though I was repeatedly issuing the commands 'one sweep' and 'follow nearest contact'.

I've isolated the problem with hydrophone operator not picking up contacts like he should and have a new patch uploading right now that will fix the problem. It'll be up soon.

The updated patch file is listed now in the first post. This fixes the problem with the soundman not picking up sound contacts like he should be. In addition, the effects of the submarine's speed and the intensity of the waves is now more properly accounted for. Along with that, the skill level of the soundman should now play a more relevant role.

Thanks Luke. Does this patch contain the fog fix?

I will enable it once I finish my current patrol, in port.