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Originally Posted by LuftWolf
The Undiscovered Country. 
I'd really like to know how those work too! |
Would be REALLY helpful if someone who knows could say what those things are doing.
Now, I didn't touch beam widths at all, have no idea yet what they do. Trying reporting accuracy now. I feel I'm becoming to understand how it works although get some strange results. In general, ALL passive sonars have it set to 3. This probably resutls in no bearing error at close ranges and small bearing errors at long ranges. Value of 10 caused contact to be all around the ship (or at least 180deg). Interesting results with value 1. I got 5deg "bearing scattering" at about 6nm - probably too much if not for VLF (and only one value can be set for whole range of freqs the sonar is working on).
5deg error is consistent with what is visible on "bearing error curves" in DB editor. Got not very interesting results for 2 and 4 settings, but I'm abandoning towed array and will reply tests on sphere, we'll see.
Probably the error with "1" setting is too much even for towed array...
I would like smaller error but with no "error free" zone, like with default setting (I'm not sure yet but seems contacts up to 30.000m are showed with no error - or it is less than 1deg so not shows up). In general, lower value, greater the bearing error down to 1, 0 seems to be no error at all, not sure what happens for higher values like 5 or 10 (when bearing errors are show as negative values)... :hmm: :hmm: :hmm: :hmm:
P.S. settings giving negative results, so 5 and higher, are not valid, results in bearing dispersion of 360deg :-) so valid settings seem to be 0 (no errors) and 1,2,3,4 with 1 largest b. error and 4 smallest b. error (0deg up to 25nm).
For now I would test how works in practice values of 2 for sphere sonars and 1 for towed array... but errors for towed could be too big so maybe 2 for both would be ok... value of 3 that is set currently gives almost no errors at practic ranges.
P.P.S. But maybe even value of 1 is ok. Seems that even if contact bearing is jumping 5 or more degrees on map, the bearings that are send to TMA plot aren't so dispersed, they differ for about 1-2 deg at most... just like some kind of "average" values of bearing were send to TMA, not current second readings... so even large visible bearing scattering results in relatively much smaller bearing scattering on TMA plot. 1-2 deg error on TMA plot makes long range solution harder and less exact (you have to average dots on your own while making the line) but not impossible.
Have to be tested in practice in gameplay, how accurate solution can be obtained from data with such bearing error or other.
I always wondered if solution from towed sonar only LF contact is precise enaugh for firing solution, or it's only initial detection system and later you have to catch target on sphere and hull to plot more precise position for attack ? Bearing error of typical towed array (TB-16) in 50-100Hz range is probably not public info....?