I have been using the 'just bellow the layer' approach a couple of times and it works quite well.
What I still wonder is how exactly does shallow depth affect sonar dedection. I know that the increased ambiet noise close to the surface decreases my own sonar performance. But does it also help to mask my signature? Will I be less detectable by lets say a surface ship when operating at PD compared to 250ft?
On a similar note I wonder how the acoustic condition areas on the nav map work exactly. As we know, the different shades of blue on the nav map do not idicate depth but rather acoustic conditions. The question is, where in calculation of the game do they take effect? Will they effect the sensor only (by reducing effectivity) or also the source (by masking emissions)? What about the in between? Let's say both sensor and source are in good acoustic conditions but in between them is a region of bad ones. Is the travel of sound trough that region of bad acoustic conditions taken into account by the game?
My last question is unrelated but I don't want to open a new topic just for that. When using the active sonar of the FFG I noticed that some seconds after the ping I saw a second "wave" traveling up the display. I guess this is some sort of bottom bounce effect, where some sound waves have taken a longer route that took longer. What effect was it exactly that I have been observing here? I can't remember the exact SSP, it was in about 250ft deep water and general bad acoustic conditions.
|