Quote:
Originally Posted by Fidd
Interesting. I was trying to find a mechanism whereby at silent running (creep mode) the use of planes and rudder could differ from normal, if indeed the electric motors driving the plane and rudder movements could be picked up on ASDIC. Do you see any broadly realistic ways that the use of creep-mode could cause? (Such as it preventing assisted movement via electric motor).
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ASDIC won’t pick this up (that is active sonar), but the escort’s hydrophones would. Both the rudder and hydroplane motors themselves as well as the braking relays.
Creep mode within the context of the switch on the switchboard currently works as it did in real life, it prevents the clacking of the starting relay within the switchboard itself while the e-motor is in the lowest speed configuration. It does this by keeping the holding coil energized that actuated the relay that shorted the starting resistor and thus kept the resistor shorted while creep was on. Normally, the starting resistor was only in the circuit for about two seconds when switching, by a timed relay, then shorted after this time as the motor had then built up sufficient CEMF to mitigate armature current. On starting or switching, armature current can climb tremendously high because of the momentary lack of CEMF and so resistance is needed for a short time.
But, because of the low armature current in the lowest speed configuration, that is, a 55 V drop in series across both armatures and 110 V from the batteries in parallel, the starting resistor could be ignored, and this was taken advantage of with the creep setting so the relay didn’t make noise.
The next logical step for the developers would be to make this relay clacking audible to escorts. So I don’t think anything needs to change with regard to that switch, it would just be an AI thing.
Now, regarding the rudder and hydroplane relays, the only way to make that stop, or the motor sound stop, is of course to switch to manual, and so that would also be an AI change. Nothing needs to change with the creep mode switch though. That works as it should, and is unrelated to the rudder and hydroplane motors.