Contact madness

[Pishky]

Hi there gurus.

I would be really grateful on some tips as how to manage a large number of contacts. I have been trying to play a scenario in which you have to find and sink a kilo submarine. The problem is that there are many approx 12-15 other contacts including surface ships, bilogical entities. When you look at the waterfall display it is a total mess, thick lines, thin lines,overlapping lines and to make things worse you can only assign at most 8 trackers. I cannot even differentiate b/w real and phantom contacts and have no idea which contacts to ignore, which to track. Any ideas??

Regards

Peter

[Bellman]

Hi Pishky - this is quite a big topic to cover in one post.

Dont jump in at the deep end - start in Quick Missions with some 'Easy' scenarios with fewer platforms
and as you gain confidence progress to denser contact environments.

At first you dont know what you are looking for so its hard to be selective. As newcommers we tend
not to be able 'to see the wood for the trees' - later you will distinguish what is relevant for example
possub and 'at risk' neutrals.

However some practical guidelines (SW) for dealing with high contact environments. In short order:
1. Assign trackers to SA. BB contacts and make a note of the brg/ref/trackers.
2. Find matching TA BB contacts , assign trackers and merge them in TMA to form masters. (Truth)
3. Check out the contacts in NB for classification and mark Nav.
Note any that are uncertain and monitor.
4. Now concentrate on the remaining TA contacts - first slide the mouse pointer over BB contacts and in the SW
where you get a WAA range that is the' real ' contact.(ie not ghost)

So, way to go, already you have probably halved the workload which at first seemed overwhelming !

5. The next task is to eliminate ghosts and justify the 'real' contacts is done by turning (the amount depends
on Stock or LwAmi) But before we do this we need to note the baffled (hidden) areas which currently exist
at the prow (TA) and stern (SA) and calculate our turn. You must check the revealed baffle areas post turn.
Much diving involves compromise decisions - trade-offs of what gain v what loss - so with the turn calculation.

6. The second thing pre-turn is to search with both arrays in NB for faint traces. You have set up your monitor
with the jpg from Tacman - yes ? You must pre-set the frequencies appropriate to each arrays search.
If no BB contact matches then assign a tracker in the NB central window. Evaluate - needs investigation -
determine own course. (Allowing for baffles)

7. Finaly pre-turn ( my head is hurting ) do a pointer slide in BB slowly to see if you get any SNR indications
worth investigating. A blip to 1 is enough. And make a note of any NB contacts which had no BB equivalent
and BBs with no NB (We see that more now)

Now ( heck its meal time) you can carry out your planned turn. As you turn either watch the BB and the contacts
which move are the ghosts and/or watch NB and the ghosts traces break up verticaly. For this
latter proceedure see the description in TimmyG00s excellent Tacman.
Now,( as my wife continues to holler), after turning you will have sorted out the majority of those pesky lines.
But you cant have a whisky yet, oh no, remember there may be....

8. More 'lines' are exposed by clearing the baffled areas - so you better start all over on this new batch.

Later you will take short cuts to accelerate this process by eliminating 'non-relevant' tasks.
You will get further clues from Daemon, from sound, from bearing tracking etc. But for starters it is
important to systemise the process to learn what is important.

For more see Tacman or my SVAK (Manual sonar visual aid kit) at Bills SubGuru. ts a big topic and I have only
scratched the surface but mastering manual sonar is an essential prerequisite for moving on to the Art of TMA.

NB I have knocked this out online and off the top - others I'm sure can and will add/revise, criticise ( even nitpick )

Hope this helps - for starters anyway.............mealtime !!!

[Pishky]

Hi there Bellman.

Just a quick note to say 'thank you'. Its as if a candle just got lit in a dark room. What you say makes a lot of sense to me and I am off to battle the AI :-)

Once again many thanks for your time. I am perpetually amazed by the support and help one gets around here.

Regards

[nattydread]

What i try to do is ID contacts as they appear, then keep, ignore or drop tracks based on my objectives. Once I get a general idea what a neutral is doing, I drop them once they longer pose a threat to me or of being in the way of my shot. Just keep an eye on th few(1-3) tracks you have tags on


I keep my active track list short and simple

[TopTorp '92]

Originally Posted by Pishky

Hi there gurus.

I would be really grateful on some tips as how to manage a large number of contacts. I have been trying to play a scenario in which you have to find and sink a kilo submarine. The problem is that there are many approx 12-15 other contacts including surface ships, bilogical entities. When you look at the waterfall display it is a total mess, thick lines, thin lines,overlapping lines and to make things worse you can only assign at most 8 trackers. I cannot even differentiate b/w real and phantom contacts and have no idea which contacts to ignore, which to track. Any ideas??

Regards

Peter

Whenever we found ourselves in a high density contact environment, the foremost issue on our minds was the range to the closest contact.

Without tying up too much time trying to use complex TMA to do the math, I would always recommend turning the ship slightly to see which sonar traces break left or right harder than the rest. For those contacts with harder breaks in their sonar traces, I focused my TMA time on those. That way I reduced the probability of a collision tremendously. From this initial estimate of range I knew right away the kind of LOS I was looking for to keep bearing rate manageable with range rate opening. This simple procedure works for the first 5 contacts or so AND the sonar traces will break really hard for contacts inside about 3-5kyds.

Once you have that aspect of the picture figured out try driving the ship down the bearing of a more distant contact for 10-15 minutes to see which way that trace breaks. Naturally, if the trace never breaks in a reasonable amount of time, then you will have to turn the ship yourself.

Once you’re comfortable with having the range on most of the contacts assign trackers. Also, once you have the closest contacts under control you may want to approach PD to do visual search.

Finally, when you’re in a high density environment with lots of surface traffic, conventional subs like the Kilo will want to hide near a surface ship in order to have some kind of shield.