Winches and cables

Summary

Most of the scientific activities can only be carried out with the usage of winches. Therefore the winches are among the most important devices onboard. The winch concept aims to redundancy and flexibility. Smooth operation is overseen by the ship's engineers.

Contacts

Name	Institution	Role
Ralf Krocker	Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research	Engineer In Charge

Components

The system consists of the GAPS antenna itself, mounting for installation at the ships bottom, the Easy Connect Box (ECB) and monitoring software "GAPS MMI - Man Machine Interface". The transponders can be mounted to winch wire or to a submarine vehicle or other submarine object.

GAPS is a bi-directional acoustic positioning system, which communicates between ship (antenna) and one or more transponders. Positions of the transponders are determined relative to the ship or absolute in geographic frame. GAPS must be installed with custom-built mounting and is operated below the ship's hull. It is deployed via the Hydrographenschacht.

Two acoustic transponders (MT832E-R and MT832E-HD-R) are available onboard RV Heincke. The transponders must be mechanically attached to underwater objects or vehicles. The transponders are synchronized to the GAPS and can be operated in transponder-mode (acoustic transmission and receiving) or in responder-mode (electric transmission and acoustic receiving; cables and plugs for responder-mode are not available on board). For transponder MT832E-R exists a winch cable mounting.

The Easy Connect Box (ECB) is a small interface to connect GAPS, external GPS receiver, PC with MMI-software and data management system DShip. It is switched on via the switch at the back of the ECB. The switch on the front is for the GAPS itself.

The GAPS MMI - Man Machine Interface - Software starts the GAPS and tracks the underwater transponders. It is installed on the CTD-PC in the Mess- und Registrierraum.

GAPS is connected to the GPS receiver on-board. Still there is an extra GPS receiver with accessories in case you want to use GAPS somewhere else.

No subdevices found for this sensor.

Position

Origin Description:

Electronics of the GAPS system are located in the server rack in the Mess- and Registrierraum and software is installed on the CTD-PC. The GAPS is deployed via the Hydrographenschacht.

Data logging, storage and archiving

Logged parameters

Parameter	Sensor Output Type	Unit
heading	attitude	degree
latitude	latitude	degree
longitude	longitude	degree
altitude	attitude	m
roll	attitude	degree
pitch	attitude	degree
transponder number	index	unknown
x-coordinate	distance	m
y-coordinate	distance	m
z-coordinate	distance	m
depth	depth	m
month	date and time	unknown
time in hours	date and time	unknown
year	date and time	unknown
day	date and time	unknown

Central geographical ship's position and time standard

Time synchronising of the PC with MMI-Software via Windows-Domain-Affiliation. Centering of GPS-antenna position to GAPS and to transponders.

Rawdata storage on board

Data storage in DShip system.

DShip

Uncorrected measurement data.

Device name	GAPS
Parameters	Transponder2; Transponder3; Transponder1; Ship0; Altitude std dev; GAPS.HEHDT.Sentence; GAPS.PIXSE.ATI.datafield01; GAPS.PIXSE.ATI.datafield04; GAPS.PIXSE.STDH.datafield01; GAPS.PIXSE.STDP.datafield01; Heading [deg]; Heading std dev; Latitude std dev; Longitude std dev; Pitch [deg]; Pitch std dev; Roll [deg]; Roll std dev
Transponder Parameter	Day; Depth [m]; EW; Month; NS; Time; Transponder No SAG; Transponder No SAX; X coordinate [m]; Y coordinate [m]; Year; Z coordinate [m]
Ship0 Parameter	Day; Depth [m]; EW; GAPS.PTSAG.0.Latitude; GAPS.PTSAG.0.Longitude; Month; NS; Time; Transponder_No_SAG;Transponder_No_SAX; X_coordinate [m]; Y_coordinate [m]; Year; Z_coordinate [m]

Data archiving on land

After the cruise the DShip data set can be extracted from https://dms.awi.de.

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