What does the Rod Antenna do?
 

I've tried to Google information on the Rod Antenna and didn't find anything on it. I was wondering, was it used to get radio signals while underwater? In real life did it stick out of the water while the U-boat was at periscope depth?

Thanks for any information on the antenna.

Welcome to Subsim Raven2012.

From U-Boat archive: http://www.uboatarchive.net/KTBNotesCommunications.htm

U-boat Radio Equipment

U-boats carried a suite of radio equipment giving them the ability to transmit, receive and direction find on several frequency bands.
At the beginning of the war all HF and MF transmitters used forward jumping wire/antenna and the U-boat received HF transmissions on the trailing jumping wires/antennas.
Because of the polarization of the wire, the boat sometimes had to point toward or away from the station it was transmitting or receiving to/from. Later a telescopic rod antenna extending from the port side of the bridge was added.
U-boats received and transmitted messages in encrypted Morse code.
U-boats seldom, if ever, transmitted or received by voice.
The boat would have to be surfaced to transmit or receive messages on HF but could receive messages on VLF when submerged at shallow depth using the DF-loop antenna.
Snorkel-equipped U-boats carried a drum-shaped aerial atop the snorkel which enabled them to transmit and receive HF while snorkeling.
U-boats communicated almost exclusively with Control ashore.
They did not send messages or beacon signals to other U-boats unless specifically instructed to do so by Control.
A typical radio suite would consist of the following equipment:

The antenna was retracted while at periscope depth. less objects to create a tell tale wake. :Kaleun_Periskop:

Thanks for link!

I didn't know loop antenna could receive messages when submerged at shallow depths. So in a way there wasn't a bug when I was at periscope depth and I saw the loop antenna out, or was it?

I use the, Periscope_and_Antenna_fix_by_Xrundel mod that fixed the problem with the loop antenna and the rod antenna.

I do like when the rod antenna sticks out of water, but not so much when it leaves a wake as the u-boat moves. I wish there was a toggle button to bring it out and put the rod antenna away when at the right shallow depths, and also for the loop antenna when u-boat is on the surface.

Well I love the Periscope_and_Antenna_fix_Xrundel, its makes the game more visually enjoyable then the vanilla game version.

Yup, Uboats were able to receive messages at shallow depths pretty much everywhere. :yep:

Remember finding this article once when we were discussing with some GWX members
if receiving messages while submerged was a bug or not:
http://www.uboat.net/articles/35.html

(Scroll down to section 2.3)

Interesting article! I wondered about this myself. Thanks Dowly!

Thanks for the article. You learn something new everyday, I never knew they could receive signals till recently. German WWII technology still amazes me. They did some amazing things for that time period.