SHETLAND OWNERS ASSOCIATION

I guess you were on these ships a few years after me. Small world though !
Bob

Joined in 77 got made "redundant " in 94 due to Maggie Thatchers "need for change" policy.

Oh, maybe you were not after me then. I was on the Hunt class, & River class for their initial sea acceptance trials, & acompianied Waveny & Carron to Canada where they were demonstrated to the Canadian Navy.
Attended a lot of RN excercises off the Orkney islands, Gibraltar, Grimsby, & others. All to do with making sure there positioning equipment (Decca supplied) was working correctly. Latterly my company installed updated minehunting kit to replace the old plotting table, & recording positions of mine like objects digitally.
Bob

I can remember working with a decca system off the coast of Portugal, it was a small screened unit mounted on the bridge deckhead & gave your position based on the intersecting point of 3 "coloured " signals received from shore transmitter beacons. The beacons where at known shore locations so the Navvie could work out our position. When on the bridge team during sweeping or hunting scenarios I could watch & use the track trace to keep the ship on course & within the sweep area. Proved to be accurate to a matter of metres according to our charts BUT was prone to getting lost when transmitted signals from opposing beacons where in direct line of each other. Working in a training area for 5/6 days the bridge team eventually sussed out what was going on & would mark the "blind spot " areas on the relevant charts. Wish I could go back to those days, I loved my time at sea, I still keep in regular contact with my former shipmates forming our own marching platoon of veterans for various official parades in Liverpool, Remembrance Sunday, Battle of the Atlantic, Armed Forces Day to name a few.