16 September 2011
Syqwest Visit
AquaScan sidescan – SonarWiz 5 Integration Testing
This week I (John Gann) visited some old friends Mike Curran and Russ Philibert at SyQwest to add support for their new AquaScan sidescan sonar and the older HydroBox dual frequency sounder. The AquaScan is a 200kHz, CW pulse, low-cost sidescan sonar system that produced good imagery in the shallow waters near the Newport Bridge. See image to below, Figure 1:
This image is raw data with slant range correction applied but no gains applied in SonarWiz 5. The sonar was set to 80m range scale.
We were operating from Mike Curran’s 25 ft single outboard open fishing boat. The sonar was flown by hand (no winch) and except for the time we dragged the fish along the bottom, the sonar was flying at about 3-5m off the seafloor. See Mike in operation, below left, Figure 2:
The AquaScan electronics are about half the size of a cigar box and runs on 12VDC which was handy since Mike’s inverter was soaked during the recent hurricane that battered New England. The SonarWiz 5 laptop was setup down in the small cabin area that smelled similar to my hockey bag also thanks to Hurricane Irene!
We started out the day at the “crack of noon” following the normal mis-steps that seem to preface any boat outing and of course the required stops at Dunkin’ Donuts and Subway.
With Captain Russ Philibert at the helm (see Figure 4.), we headed out of scenic Newport first trying to survey at the mouth of the bay. A combination of a small boat and large seas failed to yield the beauty records we were hoping for. So after a couple of hours of bouncing around we headed for the harbor but not before scanning the wreck at long range. We finished the day inside the harbor dodging tourist boats and acquired a few records similar to the one at the top of this document (see Figure 5).
Hydrobox sub-bottom – SonarWiz 5 Integration Testing
Next up was the HydroBox. SonarWiz 5 already supports acquisition and post-processing of the StrataBox and Bathy 2010 systems from SyQwest but owing to recent customer requests, we have now added the HydroBox system as well. HydroBox is a simple dual frequency sounder, but recording in SonarWiz 5 provides the ability to view and record the complete echogram from both channels and of course the survey line and navigation services too. SonarWiz 5 records the HydroBox data in a conforming SEG-Y format (See Figure 6.)
