Hydrophone - Three Questions

[Karl-Heinz Jaeger]

Originally Posted by capt_frank

i've got three relatively easy questions:

1. say i'm at 50m submerged, dead stop with a heading of 180 degrees. over the din that's emminating from klaus in the WC, the hydrophone operator picks up a contact bearing 122 degrees. am i supposed to set my course to 122 degrees to intercept, or do i ADD 122 degrees to my current heading to intercept?

2. when does the notepad give any information, when i'm close enough to spit?

3. i see that one of the hydrophone commands is to follow the nearest contact...but my operator always tells me there isn't one.

thanks!

frank

1) As Bobo said, the bearing on your hydrophone and the bearing on the periscope is always relative to the front of your sub/boat and not North. So, if you are travelling due East, which is 90degrees relative to North and you pick up a sound contact bearing 180degrees that means the contact is directly behind you relative to the front of your boat which would be 270degrees relative to north. It's confusing but you get used to it!!!


2) The notepad only gives information when you are locked onto a target, however you can lock onto targets that you cannot see in heavy fog/rain or rough seas if they are within the normal viewing distance, which is around 8000meters I think. You won't actually be able to see the contact, but if you put your scope on the bearing your sonarman gives you and hit the lock target button, chances are your scope will lock and you'll get data on your notepad. (This all assumes you have Manual TDC off like I do!!)

3) This happens to everybody, only thing I've been able to do instead of telling him to follow nearest sound contact, just click report on nearest contact and he'll read off the data for you.

Hope this helps!!