I mean, the movie might be forgettable, but it’s a really great song.
The Star Trek theme isn’t nearly as awesome, though.
And speaking of 80s movies, the real “Philadelphia Experiment” was about trying to find ways to hide a ship from a magnetic anomaly detector. But from there, the rumors went to “invisible ships”, and from there to “disappearing ships”, and from there to “time-traveling ship”.
Well by the time I was in the degaussing system and tune-ups were common knowledge, but it was Top Secret during WWII. Made a big difference apparently with the magnetic mines especially.
Outside of checking the control panel for routine preventive maintenance, I’ve forgotten what I knew about that system. I remember more about the cathodic protection system.
An interesting teardown of the AN/ASQ-81.
And if you’re really bored, an explanation of how optically-pumped magnetometers work.
I was really hoping they played this version
Given his experience in the Navy, I wonder now if that is where Heinlein got his idea for the dropships in Starship Troopers playing individual songs for their respective MI marines.
I believe that is accurate.
That was really interesting. Nowadays Squid (superconducting quantum interference detector) devices are the new hotness. But the need to cool them probably makes them less useful for ASW. (But warships wrangle much nastier stuff than liquid nitrogen.) In a previous life I worked a lot with geomagnetic surveys, and the modern squid based surveys were fabulous. Very low noise, and the magnetometers could give us a full second order tensor of the field. For our purposes that essentially doubled the spatial resolution of a survey. You can see a lot of deep geology with the right tools. Especially geology that people care about.
What was more mind bending was full tensor gravimetric surveys. That came available when technology used by nuclear submarines to navigate was declassified. Submarines can navigate by observing the changing gravity field, and so long as they are travelling in a previously surveyed region, they can calculate their path. What I still maintain can’t possibly work (even though it does) is airborne gravimetry. Satellite gravity is also mind bending. Highly accurate satellite sea surface level measurements allow the sea level gravity to be measured. I have wondered if this was accurate enough to provide maps for the subs to navigate with. It is accurate enough and has enough resolution to detect and map things like continental crust morphology (which if you are in oil & gas is a pretty useful start.)
He was in the Navy 1929 to 1934, the standard/only audio recording mechanism available then was the 78 rpm record. Would the Navy have kept a record player in the PA room to play the ship’s theme song?
One: Why not?
Two: I assume he kept up on what was happening in the Navy up to a point.
Now that we’ve identified what the thing is, I’ll add some different aeronautical terminology tidbits to the OP’s answers.
The bulge hanging off the lower side of the fuselage of a helicopter (or airplane) is called a “sponson”. That’s a general purpose streamlined housing that could have any number of devices hanging off it or installed within it. Further, it’s often a flotation device and by sticking out out laterally, it makes the aircraft more laterally stable while sitting in the water.
Landing gear is a common device installed in/on sponsons. So are weapon pylons. So are the cable reels for deployable sensors like MAD detectors and dipping sonars. In some cases, so are forward-facing radar systems.
As to the specific helos in Final Countdown, the MAD reel is installed on the right sponson behind the right main landing gear. It might at first glance look like it’s related to the landing gear, but it is not. They’re just mounted nearby one another.