Podcast Episode 097: How To Listen in deadly situations with curiosity – Peter Scott

00:00 Peter Scott:  I was at sea, in command, off the coast of Western Australia. Approaching the coast is dangerous in any vessel, or can be. Approaching the coast, dived end deep, can be particularly dangerous.

We’d put together a very detailed plan about what depth to travel at, what speed to travel at, when to come shallow.

I can get nine minutes of sleep out of 10 minutes flat on my back, and I had an opportunity for about 30 minutes’ sleep. I just laid my head down, been there for just a moment.

I looked up at our speed indicator in my control room, and I noticed that the guys hadn’t reduced speed, and I expected that they would have. But I thought, “It’s okay. They know the plan, they’ll reduce speed.” And I went to sleep.

The next thing that I felt waking me up was this fluttering sensation, coming, rising up through the bunk, and sort of rattling my bones. And what that was, was the submarine coming up against the continental shelf.

We went out at depth, and at speed, and I was driving my submarine into the continental shelf.

We grounded the submarine.

01:34 Oscar Trimboli Deep listening. Impact beyond words.

G’day, I’m Oscar Trimboli, and this is the Apple award-winning podcast, Deep Listening, designed to move you from a distracted listener, to a deep and impactful leader.

Did you know you spend 55% of your day listening, yet, only 2% of people have ever been taught how? In each episode, we explore the five levels of listening.

Communication is 50% speaking, and 50% listening. Yet as a leader, you are taught only the importance of communication from the perspective of how to speak. It’s critical you start to build some muscles for the next phase in how to listen.

The cost of not listening. It’s confusion, it’s conflict. It’s projects running over schedule. It’s lost customers, it’s great employees that leave before they want to.

When you implement the strategies, the tips and tactics that you’ll hear, you’ll get four hours a week back in your schedule. I wonder what you could do with an extra four hours a week.

 

Retired Naval Commander Peter Scott has the 35 years’ experience in leading specialist teams in complex and demanding underwater environments. Joining the Navy as a 17-year-old midshipman, he rose through the ranks over three decades to become the head of the Navy’s elite submarine arm.

 

During that journey, Peter survived and led others through fires at sea, floods and explosions. A veteran of multiple special operations with the submarine arm, Peter’s service included Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and Afghanistan.

 

I went back into the early planning documents of the podcast, and in August 2016, I looked at the very first list of people we wanted to have a chat to, acoustic engineers and actors, deaf and foreign language interpreters, judges, journalists and many others. Yet the most elusive on that list proved to be the submarine commander.

Now, six years later, I’m excited to understand how to listen under the water. Thanks to Kelly for the introduction to Peter. With Peter, we’ll explore the role, not only of a submarine commander, but the role of a sonar operator as well, or their official title, acoustic warfare analyst.

We get to go behind the scenes, in one of the world’s most complex and demanding a listening environments, and notice how professional acoustic warfare analysts listen.

 

Finally, Peter explains what it’s like to command a submarine that you crash under the water, and the importance of listening to your intuition as a leader.

04:34 Oscar Trimboli Peter, what do you think the cost of not listening is?

04:44 Peter Scott The cost of not listening is a matter of life and death.

Submarines’ greatest tactical advantage lies around their stealth. To be able to do that, you need to understand your environment, and one of the principle ways we understand our environment is by listening. And if you are not listening well, if you are not listening to the very best of your ability, then the consequence can be measured in life, either your own, or others.

05:16 Oscar Trimboli For many of us, the only way we know about submarines is what we see in movies, documentaries or TV shows. Peter, could you just zoom us in? What’s the environment like? You’re under the water for days, weeks, months.

05:31 Peter Scott We’ll very often head out away from home for six months. It might be seven, eight weeks between ports. Our modern submarines spend most of that time dived. Older submarines used to transit on the roofs.

It’s very much a 24-hour operation. There’s no weekends out there. Your submarine is a living, breathing thing. And it’s up to the people on board to keep it living and breathing.

05:55 Oscar Trimboli Peter, what’s the composition of the submarine crew?

Very highly specialised crews on board submarines. We’ve got sonar technicians, we’ve got mechanical technicians, electrical technicians. We’ve got analysts, sailors, and officers, focus specialised in navigation, engineering, and so on.

06:13 Peter Scott One of the things that shapes how we go about things is that necessary stealth, and a warship does a lot of what it does through presence. They are very active. They will transmit on radar to understand what’s around them. They’ll transmit on sonar, to understand what’s under them. They’ll communicate between ships, and with the headquarters.

Submarines are very different, very much a passive approach. We don’t transmit on sonar. We tend to intercept communications rather than send them. We’ll use a periscope, which can’t be seen.

So it’s very much about seeing without being seen, hearing without being heard, knowing without being known. It’s quite different in that regard. And that shapes the way you go about everything.

It shapes the preparations you make with your boat, the training you give your people. It shapes the way that we communicate among ourselves, and the way that we do or don’t communicate with others.

07:23 Oscar Trimboli Peter, in our last episode, we spoke to Natasha, former leader at West Point Military Academy, about the importance of acknowledging commands and orders, ensuring that not only the command has been described, but it’s also been understood. How does that happen in a submarine at the depths of the ocean?

07:45 Peter Scott We are very deliberate with orders and reports and acknowledgements. If the officer of the day, or the officer of the watch needs the engine room hatch open …

Engine room, control room, open the engine room hatch.

The acknowledgement will be a direct repetition of that.

Control room to engine room, open the engine room hatch.

 

What that means is that you, you know exactly what you’ve said, he knows what you’ve said, and you know that he knows. There’s that clear clarity on what you’ve told them to do.

 

They’ll then go away and do it, and then they’ll report in the reverse. So, “Control to engine room, engine room hatch open. Engine room to control room, engine room hatch open.”

 

So just, order, acknowledge, report, acknowledge. And that sounds a little bit overdone. When you’re onboard a submarine, it can become really confusing, because, particularly in intense situations, there can be scores of these orders and reports moving around.

 

The really important ones get conducted on the main broadcast, no matter where you are on the boat, you can hear it going on. But that happens, because clarity is absolutely essential, and the meaning is absolutely essential.

 

That engine room hatch is down aft, and it’s low by the water line, and it’s a bloody big hole in the submarine. And if you’re about to dive your submarine, you want to know all those hatches are shut, so there could be no confusion, and no obfuscation.

09:21 Oscar Trimboli One of the things we talk about a lot is the importance of listening to yourself. When it comes to a submarine, how does a submarine listen to itself?

09:31 Peter Scott What we seek to do is, quite simply, minimise the noise that we are making, that we have to deal with. The ocean is a really noisy environment. Oceans are filled with sound. There’s geological sound, like volcanoes, biological sound, like dolphins and fish, man made sound, like ships and oil rigs out there.

 

There’s sounds among the sounds, and the job of our sonar analyst is to isolate and analyse, and make meaning of that. One of the things that can interfere with their ability to listen to what’s going on beyond, is dealing with what’s going on, on the boat.

10:16 Oscar Trimboli Listening at Level One, minimise distractions, and minimise notifications, and take three deep breaths, is what we say for human interaction.

 

Peter, I’m curious, is there a parallel process for the submarine and the interconnected systems that it’s integrated to? How do you set up an environment, where the submarine can listen to itself?

10:41 Peter Scott When I was in command, we took Collins to Alaska, along that way. The reason we took her there was because the United States Navy has a acoustic range, in a place called Behm Canal. It’s there because it’s exceptionally deep, exceptionally quiet water.

We took Collins there to take her over a range of acoustic hydrophone arrays, and measure and record the acoustic signature of the submarines, the noise we made at different speeds, the noise we made with different pumps running, and it took 10 days to understand precisely what the signature was.

But knowing that means that we can minimise our own noise. And it means that if it is interfering with something, we can recognise it and discount it.

 

It makes a huge difference to your ability to understand what’s going on, is your ability to understand what’s going on internally.

 

For me, there’s a very direct correlation between conversations, your ability to quieten the noise that’s going on inside you, emotional or otherwise, so that you can pay attention to what’s going on.

12:04 Oscar Trimboli Peter, at the deepest and darkest parts of Alaska, you’re in this canal, and you have to test the vessel to see what kind of sounds it makes, and how to adjust accordingly.

 

Can you step us through how deliberate these tests are, the procedures to ensure that you can listen to what the sound signature is, of HMAS Collins?

12:30 Peter Scott It took us 10 days to do this. That’s 10 days and 10 nights, just 24/7. Some of the runs that we did were dived and underway, so moving through the water at different speeds.

 

Some of the runs that we did were actually dived but static. The submarine was strung up between two massive buoys, and then we were winched down, several hundred metres, into the sound.

 

We basically collapsed to a dead boat, switched off everything, generators, air conditioners, refrigeration, lighting, everything. It was eerie. I’m used to living in a submarine, but this was blacker than black, colder than cold.

Then, literally, one by one, flick a switch, we’d spent probably a year communicating with the range earlier, to help them understand what all the systems were on board, and develop a process to shut everything down, bring everything up. Then we spent three to four days down there, deep and static recording.

 

We had communications with the range hub, and they were sort of running the show. That was just through an umbilical wire going up. And very often, they would say, “Switch on item number 77.”

 

We would say, “It’s on,” and they would say, “Well, there’s nothing heard.” They just wouldn’t detect anything. That was the case for a lot of this stuff, because it’s just an exceptionally well-designed and built boat.

14:06 Oscar Trimboli Hey, it’s Oscar. Creating the foundations for exceptional listening happens at Level One, listening to yourself.

 

In the case of HMAS Collins, they spent 240 hours, continuously listening, noticing, reflecting, checking, and preparing to listen over 14,000 minutes. I wonder how long you spent listening to yourself before a conversation.

 

The Deep Listening playing card series are 50 cards designed to help you and others listen better. Card Number One, Listening to Yourself, is about the concept of distractions. It says, “Knowing that you will be distracted helps you notice your distractions faster.”

 

Similar to the procedures that Peter just outlined with the submarine, procedures help you focus on what matters. Think of the cards as your own set of procedures.

 

The cards provide a tip. In this case, it says, “Anticipate what might distract you in advance of the discussion,” and then, it poses a question. “What am I most commonly distracted by?”

 

If you’d like to learn more, visit www.Oscartrimboli.com/cards That’s www.oscartrimboli.com/cards

 

Peter, one of the things I notice working with leaders, what distinguishes good leaders from great leaders, is the leaders who listen transactionally have a limited impact.

 

Yet the leaders, the great leaders who listen in a sustained and systematic way, have an ability to listen to individuals, teams, groups, systems, and the interconnected systems in their environment, as well. On the submarine, how did you listen and bring all these pieces together, rather than just listening for one element?

16:38 Peter Scott If we just start internal to the submarine, let’s say we’re at action stations. So the control room is fully manned, your submarine’s fully manned, and you’ve got little teams of people all over the place.

 

You’ve got a sonar team doing their piece. You’ve got a track management team doing their place. Ship control are keeping the submarine on depth and on course. The engineers are keeping everything up and running. And there are lots of little conversations happening in there, that are domain specific, but some parts of those conversations need to be shared to the wider team.

 

The learning for your people is what to share and when, and being able to bring it into the dialogue at the right time. In the ordinary course of events, if a ship is detected by a sonar operator, they might need to tell the officer of the watch.

 

When you’re at action stations, if that ship is classified as a warship, then you better let the captain know, because it might be a threat, or it might be a target. That would be the time to break into the wider conversation that’s been happening in the control room there.

 

That is about understanding, not only your system, but that wider system that’s operating inside the submarine. And it’s got to go beyond that, as well. That really is about interpreting the relevance of the information that you have in the submarine, to the situation outside.

 

For someone like the sonar operator, it is about understanding, “Okay, what’s the situation that the submarine is in? What’s the environment that it’s in? What mission is it trying to achieve?”

 

And therefore, what relevance does their piece of information or their advice have? And is it more or less important than the report that’s coming in from that electronic warfare operator, or the report from the plainsman, about being in depth?

18:30 Oscar Trimboli Peter, the eyes of the vessel, maybe the periscope, and the ears could be the sonar operators. Movies provide us with very narrow perspective.

 

We kind of see these people with very sophisticated audio and visual equipment, recording and listening for any squeak that could happen out there. How does a sonar operator learn to do what they do?

19:01 Peter Scott It probably starts by making a commitment that they will be a professional listener. And there aren’t many domains where you wear a badge as a professional listener, but that’s fundamentally what they are.

 

Their proper title is acoustic warfare analyst. Perhaps a point to note is that on board a submarine, you might have a Jonesy, but it takes a team to have a complete sort of sonar effect.

 

Typically, that team will be three for strong, junior up to fairly senior and experienced folk. They’ll be broken into watches. So half the guys will be on for six hours, and then they’ll be relieved by another six.

 

There’s some rudimentary selection. They’ve got to have good hearing, but not exceptional or extraordinary, just good hearing. They’ve got to be able to live and operate as a submariner. So that’s their specialisation, but they need to be able to contribute and work within the team, in a whole lot of different ways.

 

Then they do a lot of training. They’re trained in the theory of acoustics, sonar propagation, and they’re trained in the technical aspects of their equipment, the sonars that are built into the submarine, and the equipment that they use to either listen to, or view the sound.

 

Also, there’s recording machinery. Because a lot of what they need to do is record what’s out there, so that they can further analyse it later, or so that it can be analysed ashore, and shared.

 

So, a lot of technical knowledge, and then a lot of practical application of that, both ashore, in simulators, and then at sea, initially under supervision. When they’re out there, we manage them pretty carefully.

You cannot listen intently forever, and you don’t need to, either, but you need to know when to listen intently. Six on, six off, is one part of it. Like everyone on board, they need to be able to do that for weeks on end, but also, we’ll rotate them through the different sets.

For 30 minutes, they might be manning this sonar, which is looking at this frequency. Then they’ll rotate and look at another sonar, operating principally at a different frequency, and so on.

Often the sonars are optimised for different ranges. The sound moves through water more effectively at low frequency than at high frequency.

Sonars built for low frequency will detect a contact further out. Higher frequencies tend to be, you need to be either much more powerful, or closer.

They move through the sonars. They take breaks pretty often, as well, just so that they can stay fresh. And they’re always doing that cognitive comparison between what they’re seeing, the displays of the sonar energy, and what they’re hearing.

21:52 Oscar Trimboli When you think about a shift, you’ve got six hours, you’ve got teams of two, three or four. I think that point you made, Peter, is very powerful, where you can’t listen intently forever.

 

These professional listeners take breaks when it comes to their listening. So if you’re listening right now, I’ve asked you on previous episodes, “How do you recharge your listening batteries?” And you’ve heard that a sonar operator takes breaks, despite the fact that they are listening intently, they’re listening visually, they’re able to record everything.

How do you take your listening breaks? How do you ensure that you change the context, to reset and recharge your listening?

For me, it’s really simple. What I do is, I have three different songs that I play in between context switches, so that I can recharge my listening batteries.

I’m curious, what songs might you listen to, to recharge your listening batteries? For me, the listening songs I listen to are very, very different.

They’re at three deliberately different speeds. They’re at three very different lengths, as well.

These songs are, in order, slowest beats per minute, to fastest beats per minute. It’s also no coincidence, the ones that have the slowest beats per minute are the longest, and the ones with the fastest beats per minute are the shortest.

 

So the first song for me, Weightless, by Marco Union, an instrumental. There are absolutely no words in this eight-minute section. Thanks to Matt for the recommendation.

 

The second one, five minutes, 52, It’s Easy, by Groove Armada. Thanks to Sarah, for the recommendation and your story about a festival where you heard this at.

 

Then the last song, three minutes and 50 seconds, Remember the Name, Fort Minor. Thanks to Holly for that recommendation. Each of these songs recharges my listening batteries very quickly. I’ll be curious, which songs do you listen to, that recharge your listening batteries?

 

Or what techniques do you use to recharge your listening batteries? Send me an e-mail at podcast@oscartrimboli.com. That’s podcast@oscartrimboli.com, and let me know, how do you recharge your listening batteries? Let’s go back to Peter.

 

Peter, listening is an art, and it’s a science. And interpreting at the depths of the ocean, when we’re listening mathematically, you’ll literally see a visual representation of the audio signal on the acoustic warfare analyst screen.

 

So there is a science to how you listen. There’s also an art that’s developed over decades and decades of experience. Well, I’m curious.

 

What do you think distinguishes a sonar operator, an acoustic warfare analyst, that’s listening beyond what they see, and what they hear. Is it possible to listen for context, for unsaid and for meaning, at the depths of the ocean?

25:49 Peter Scott I did a job a couple of years, on exchange, with the Royal Navy, and in one of their submarines. We deployed from the UK, through the Mediterranean, and out into the Indian Ocean.

 

The environmental conditions out there were really quite dramatic. And I’m talking about the environmental conditions beneath, in the water column. There was some very stiff, what we call layers, changes in temperature, and changes in temperature and density in the water affect the path that sound will take.

 

One of the consequences of that was, a ship could be pedallng along on the surface. And instead of us being able to hear that ship at a long range, the sound would literally be bent directly away from the ship, and down through the depths to the bottom. We would have to be very close before we could hear it.

And normally, that’s not a problem, unless we are deep, and trying to come up to periscope depth. Before a submarine comes from a deep position to Periscope depth, we stand the sonar watch, too, and they go through some procedures, to make sure that they understand what’s out there.

We did that, and one of the things that the sonar guys noticed, but didn’t report, was a rise in background noise on one bearing. And it didn’t seem like much to that operator at that time.

As we came up, and I got to periscope depth, and my little periscope popped out, the very first thing I saw was a warship that was very close, and just driving almost directly at us. And we had to take the submarine deep in emergency, very quickly.

 

I guess that sonar operator had not really paid attention to the context of the environment in which he was operating, because if he had, then we would have been paying more attention to that. And we would have been trying to understand that a bit more, before we put ourselves in that situation.

27:56 Oscar Trimboli What else can acoustic warfare analyst, a sonar operator, teach us about listening?

28:02 Peter Scott So I think one way is just to emphasise the preparation that they do, and the structure that we put around the work that they do. If we are deploying a submarine into an area, we will put immense effort into understanding the environment we’re going into, the sort of environmental conditions, the sort of shipping that we’re likely to see. That helps us go into a situation prepared, so that we can then adapt and learn as we go, that we’re not starting from scratch.

 

Typically, if we’re going somewhere, we’re going for a reason, and we’ll very often be searching. Submarines are designed around their sensors. The hull is formed to minimise acoustic noise from flow. The sensors are placed in the best possible position, to receive what they need to receive, whether that’s underwater sensors, or masts and periscopes.

 

We’ll go into an environment very well prepared, drawing on experience, knowing what we’re listening for. And then, when we are there, we’ll put a lot of effort into positioning the submarine in the right area, placing the sensors and optimising them, making sure that you’re able to listen most effectively down a bearing, where you expect a threat to come from, or being at the right depth, where you expect to hear a submarine.

 

It’s about knowing what you’re looking for, and searching for that. If you’re searching in a conversational context, if you’re searching for content or meaning, then know that, and position yourself to do that. And literally, situate yourself in the right place at the right time, and in the right state, to discover.

29:50 Oscar Trimboli Have you noticed any variation between genders, and how sonar operators listen across genders?

29:59 Peter Scott Women get less distracted. They’re actually better at paying finer attention for longer, paying greater attention to the details for longer.

30:11 Oscar Trimboli How are you noticing that, given you’re behind them?

30:!4 Peter Scott It’s in the body language. They’ve got headsets on, and they can communicate quietly among each other, or they can broadcast what they want to say. It’s just from observing them.

 

This is curious, because most of the time, when I’m observing sonar operators, I’m actually observing the back of their heads. They’re all sat to their consoles, I’m behind them. I can see their screens better than I can see their faces.

 

Most of their conversation and chit chat is internal. And I can only really observe it, and only need to observe it, from the body language.

 

To command an Australian submarine, I had to pass a Submarine Commanding Officers Qualifying Course. And the course that we do is with the Dutch.

 

So we’d travel over to Europe. We’d spend months in a simulator, training, and then, months at sea, putting stuff into the practise at sea, in a Dutch submarine.

 

Now, lots of Dutchmen and women speak English, but on their submarine, they speak Dutch. And I had this genuine, and I thought, valid concern about, “How the hell am I going to command these guys, when I can’t even understand the language they’re speaking?”

 

But what I learned very quickly was that people are people. And if I’m looking at the back of two sonar operators’ heads, and they are being attentive, then I know.

 

If they are calm and comfortable with the situation, I know. If they’re not, if they’re becoming agitated, I know.

31:46 Oscar Trimboli Peter, naval sailing and traditions are very ancient. And yet, modern vessels, they’re the ultimate technology weapons.

 

But with all this technology, do you get blinded to too much technology? What do you think differentiates modern warriors under the water?

32:08 Peter Scott Curiosity, not being willing to allow something that you don’t understand to pass you by. Always, and this is relevant for the sonar operators, to always be searching, what is out there? What could be out there? What is this? What could this be? What else could this be? What does this mean for us?

You don’t get that without curiosity, and without fostering your curiosity, and building it, and honouring it. And in a submarine at sea, it’s what keeps you alive.

32:49 Oscar Trimboli Tell me more about curiosity, Commander Scott.

32:53 Peter Scott So Oscar, I was at sea, in command off the coast of Western Australia, and we had been working up our submarine. We’d been through a series of three months’ worth of exercises, training and operating against warships, aircraft, submarines, to get ourselves ready for a really significant and long deployment.

 

Everything had been going exceptionally well, right up to literally, the last serial, on the last night, we’d just conducted a simulated attack against some warships. I’d taken the submarine deep to evade, and our next serial was an inshore operation early the following morning.

Approaching the coast is dangerous in any vessel, or can be. Approaching the coast, dived end deep, can be particularly dangerous.

 

We’d put together a very detailed plan about what depth to travel at, what speed to travel at, when to come shallow, when to coordinate some. I left the team to it, and went to get … Probably, I can get nine minutes’ sleep out of 10 minutes, flat on my back.

 

I had an opportunity for about 30 minutes’ sleep. This is a story about curiosity, but really, it’s about a failure of curiosity. I just laid my head down, been there for just a moment.

 

I looked up at our speed indicator in my control room, and I noticed that the guys hadn’t reduced speed, and I expected that they would have. But I thought, “It’s okay. They know the plan, they’ll reduce speed.” And I went to sleep.

 

The next thing that I felt waking me up was this fluttering sensation, coming, rising up through the bunk, and sort of rattling my bones. And what that was, was the submarine coming up against the continental shelf.

 

We were now at depth. There’s a Naval term called “smelling the ground,” if you can imagine. And we were now at depth, and at speed, and I was driving my submarine into the continental shelf. We grounded the submarine. Now, I left a hell of a skid mark on the bottom of the submarine.

 

That was a failure of curiosity. My gut instinct told me that was wrong. And if I had made one remark to the officer at watch at that time, that would never have happened.

 

But I let it go, and my lack of curiosity almost had us undone. It was not a great day. It could have been a disaster.

 

Wonderful discussion about all elements of listening. We went through all five levels of listening today with retired commander, Peter Scott. Thanks again to Kelly for the introduction, and it was worth a six-year wait.

 

I’m taking away a few things today that I will implement personally. I’ll become a lot more conscious about instructions, clear instructions, making sure they’re understood, making sure I’m finding a couple more new songs to play, to reset, and recharge my listening batteries.

 

I loved that Peter had the self-awareness to talk about when listening, or the lack of it, almost crashed the submarine Peter’s description about curiosity is really important, but I think his courage to speak openly and honestly about failure is what made him a successful commander.

 

I’m curious if you’d like to share your listening failures with me. Let me know, podcast@oscartrimboli.com. That’s podcast@oscartrimboli.com. I’d be fascinated to understand when a lack of curiosity or transactional listening, where you were only listening to the content showed up, and created a disaster for you.

Across my career, there were many times where my listening or lack of it showed up. I can remember way back in the 1980s, where I was installing some accounting software for a client.

 

We had anticipated it would take three hours for the installation to take place. And every hour, the client would check with me.

 

I told him every time that it would be completed at noon. We started at nine o’clock. At noon, the client came up and said, “Is it installed yet?”

 

I hadn’t completely finished, but I should have taken the time to listen to the client, and understand what was driving the noon deadline for them. They needed the computer to do a very important task, paying the employees’ payroll.

 

My lack of listening at that very early age almost cost my company a huge client. If I’d taken some time at nine o’clock, 10 o’clock or 11 o’clock to ask the client, “What’s behind your deadline,” maybe there wouldn’t have been as much tension in the client relationship, as I created.

So I wonder what your listening disasters were. When did you crash your submarine at the bottom of the ocean?

 

Thanks for listening all this way. There’s a little bonus at the end of this episode, where Peter and I talk through the concept of swinging the compass.

 

This is a tradition that evolved from wooden ships to steel ships, and its an impact on the compass. And, it’s got some pretty good correlations for listening to yourself at Level One. It’s well worth the time, please listen.

I’m Oscar Trimboli, and I’m on a quest to create a hundred million deep listeners in the world, and you’ve given me the greatest gift of all. You’ve listened to me. Thanks for listening.

39:19 Peter Scott Are you familiar with the practise of swinging a compass?

39:23 Oscar Trimboli Tell me more.

39:25 Peter Scott Magnetic compasses are obviously subject to magnetic variation, and they’re also affected by the metal components of the ship. Swinging a compass is about a ship at anchor, and literally, it is swung around the anchor a full 360 degrees.

The variation on the compass is measured every five or six degrees around. There’s rods and bars on a compass that you can adjust, to balance out the variations.

 

It’ll take a day to swing a compass, particularly on a really big ship. But it’s worth doing, for neutralising those little index areas in the compass.