Dangerous waters sonar questions

phil21 · 01-08-14, 05:51 PM

Hi,

it's also been a long time since I played, nevertheless here are my thoughts:

I don't think these "special" sounds like popping of the hull or opening of torpedo tubes are actually modeled. There may be an increase in noise level, but i don't think anything beyond that. it would be almost useless anyway, since you would need to listen to the sonar station and especially the contact the whole time. Thereby you could not multitask, potentially a very dangerous thing.

The sonar can give you everything, in theory:
1. Bearing obviously
2. Depth above or below layer (most of the time you don't need more)
3. course by bearing rate
4. Speed via DEMON
5. Range via bearing rate

To make good use of the bearing rate you should perform course changes after a few lines. After two or three changes (and assuming your target went steady) you should be able to get a good solution.
The waterfall display is imho superiour to the circle display for a variety of reasons, the most important ones are better estimation of bearing rate and better signal to noise ration due to the signal averaging performed by adding the signal over time.

But the most important sensor is the TA Narrowband: here you get the best detection ranges, although you really need to scroll a lot. The TA can detect even the 50/60 Hz lines which travel the farest, so i use this for initial detection. btw: check your gamma settings, otherwise you might miss some very faint lines in Narrowband.

Hope this helps a little

01-08-14, 05:51 PM	#4
phil21 Sailor man Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: Germany Posts: 49 Downloads: 7 Uploads: 0	Hi, it's also been a long time since I played, nevertheless here are my thoughts: I don't think these "special" sounds like popping of the hull or opening of torpedo tubes are actually modeled. There may be an increase in noise level, but i don't think anything beyond that. it would be almost useless anyway, since you would need to listen to the sonar station and especially the contact the whole time. Thereby you could not multitask, potentially a very dangerous thing. The sonar can give you everything, in theory: 1. Bearing obviously 2. Depth above or below layer (most of the time you don't need more) 3. course by bearing rate 4. Speed via DEMON 5. Range via bearing rate To make good use of the bearing rate you should perform course changes after a few lines. After two or three changes (and assuming your target went steady) you should be able to get a good solution. The waterfall display is imho superiour to the circle display for a variety of reasons, the most important ones are better estimation of bearing rate and better signal to noise ration due to the signal averaging performed by adding the signal over time. But the most important sensor is the TA Narrowband: here you get the best detection ranges, although you really need to scroll a lot. The TA can detect even the 50/60 Hz lines which travel the farest, so i use this for initial detection. btw: check your gamma settings, otherwise you might miss some very faint lines in Narrowband. Hope this helps a little