sidescan sonar

[alexdiver]

Our dive team is interested in adding sidescan sonar to our toolset. Anyone have an opinion based on either success or failures that we should consider prior to our purchase.

[ADSNWFLD]

What type of water do you have? A sideband sonar needs tons of training to be any good at seeing things. If you have huge flat bottomed lakes and bodies of water it will work great for you. We have very small lakes with a lot of depth change and it makes their use much harder. A few years back we had one for a recovery and the operators missed the body because of the bottom contour.

It is a great tool but a good one is also expensive. Have someone bring it out and demo it to see if your water will make it worth it.

[alexdiver]

We have various types of lakes and rivers. There are 4 of them. Narrow channel and deep(75-100'), as well as wide and shallow(15-50'). Most areas have bottoms littered with stumps and rocks, sharp contour changes, etc. Some are wide mud flats. Our problem is usually poor or incredulous witnesses that cannot provide a valid lps, only a general area to search. As a result these calls become no-dive recovery efforts very early on. look at
http://maps.yahoo.com/maps using zipcode 37772 and you can see. What unit did your team evaluate or decide upon, and have you had results that would cause your team to make the same buy decision again

[fyrfitr42]

Hello,

A GOOD search dog (one that looks for bodies not live persons) has helped us clear a lot of water. Put the dog in the boat and run a grid search. When and if the dog "strikes" you can rest assured that there is a body in the water. Just like every thing else this is not the "golden bullet" that hits the target every time, its just another tool. Note: a dog must be trained to search water be good at this. If you have any questions, my email is fyrfitr42@firehousemail.com

[ChrisAReed33]

Sir,

Side Scan Sonar is a very very good tool! If you have the chance to get one , do it !!! It works "best" with a flat clean bottom, but works "well" with various bottoms. The key is training and using it on missions. I have worked with it on all types of bottoms and had good luck.
I would suggest that you do your home work prior to obtaining one.
Good luck
Chris