15 Z-Boats for Russian survey fleet

They will be used for nationwide hydrographic and surface hydrology applications in river areas extending from St Petersburg to Siberia and Vladivostok.

Each boat and instrument package forms part of a new so-called mobile station approach whereby survey teams can transport craft using identical vehicles and monitoring equipment so that technicians can carry out measurements in more locations with few restrictions and no sacrifice of data. Initial acceptance trials were completed on the Razdolnaya River in the Far East, with 300m simultaneous geo-referenced ADCP velocity and 200kHz bathymetry section studies across the river conducted in very exacting conditions, according to Roshydromet officials.

Basic onboard instrumentation for all boats comprises a Teledyne RD Instruments’ River Ray acoustic doppler current profiler for river water velocity and discharge measurement, a single beam 200kHz echosounder and GNSS equipment. Operations are supported by Eye4Software Hydromagic acquisition packages for real-time navigation and bathymetric mapping studies. All data are relayed to shore control stations in real time via multichannel radio links.