Hydrophones give you distance as well as bearing?

difool2 · 03-05-07, 02:10 PM

Possible spoilers below!

File this under the "Things I never really paid attention to until now" category...

Driving a XXI in '45. Noticed that as a contact (DE) got closer the contact line seen
via the hydrophones kept getting shorter. Felt this was odd since shouldn't the line
get longer (representing signal strength) as the contact got closer? Eventually popped
the scope up for a second and lo and behold the ship icon on the nav map perfectly
matched up with the end of the black contact line. Guess this models the sound guy
estimating distance based on the sound level and the sound "cone"-tho he's probably
much too accurate. Still need to estimate target AOB on your own but given this
information that should be a piece of cake (just X the end of the line every so often
and bingo you have his course).

I did a search for this but nobody else here seems to have noticed this-either I'm the
first (unlikely), nobody's discussed it, or something.

03-05-07, 02:10 PM	#1
difool2 Commander Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 459 Downloads: 31 Uploads: 0	Hydrophones give you distance as well as bearing? Possible spoilers below! File this under the "Things I never really paid attention to until now" category... Driving a XXI in '45. Noticed that as a contact (DE) got closer the contact line seen via the hydrophones kept getting shorter. Felt this was odd since shouldn't the line get longer (representing signal strength) as the contact got closer? Eventually popped the scope up for a second and lo and behold the ship icon on the nav map perfectly matched up with the end of the black contact line. Guess this models the sound guy estimating distance based on the sound level and the sound "cone"-tho he's probably much too accurate. Still need to estimate target AOB on your own but given this information that should be a piece of cake (just X the end of the line every so often and bingo you have his course). I did a search for this but nobody else here seems to have noticed this-either I'm the first (unlikely), nobody's discussed it, or something.