Love the chain

Looking forward to getting back to this towars the end of the year

Hope to see you back on this build very very soon Andy and thoughts will be with you that everything goes well for you..... Very best wishes...

Regards

Alan

Hi Andy

Great news on the Pontos etch, I can fully sympathize about your health problems as I too have had my fair share this year being diagnosed with cancer of the left tonsil 5 months ago and then 4 months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment which finished last Friday.
In 12 weeks il get the results after the swelling go's down.
Best of luck with your upcoming op and its funny how your priority's in life change when your faced with something like this, what was important fades to insignificance as you prioritize your life.

Regards

Andy

This is proving to be a stunning example !

Hi Ben,
This array or Gruppenhorchgerat is somewhat contentious as there are no pictures of the Bismarck with it in place. This does make sense as the technology was highly classified and any pictures which even hinted as it's prescence would have been censored. However my understanding is that there is evidence that the Prince Eugen (which was captured and used for target practice) was fitted with this new technology and it would seem entirely reasonable that the Bismarck was too, as it wouldn't make sense not to protect and enhance the pride of the Kreigsmarine with all means available.
The original Trumpeter kit has them represented as a regular array of 2 inverted 'U's' and this is probably taken from one of the popular websites http://www.bismarck-class.dk/technicallayout/ghg/ghg.html which has them drawn as such (and this should give you their suspected location), but this is almost certainly incorrect as the system worked by matching frequencies from pairs of detectors tuned to particular frequency bands. These were then angled in different directions so once a beat had been extracted from the background noise some indication of direction could also be determined and also checked with a separate pair, hence as the individual detectors were in close array this would cause an irregular patterning in the array to accommodate the different directions of alignment whilst keeping them as close as possible. I have an actual diagram of a 60 microphone array (but I am not sure of the copyright) and the different microphones are aligned in irregular groupings of pairs of about 6 different frequencies in a general overall 'U' shape. Another reasoning would be that a more regular array would be prone to resonance effects, which would amplify background and local noise drowning out any faint signals from approaching threats.
Fortunately Pontos have seen fit to provide a template for a more realistic array as follows, they also quote, amongst their several sources, the Hans Gally drawings which are held to be the most accurate, but unfortunately virtually unobtainable, so I am also inclined because of this to put some credence to their pattern;