From my experience at sea
 

It will rarely be the case that these bearings taken from your ship moving at 10 kts of another vessel moving at speed (say 5 -35 kts) will ever intersect. What jaystew is showing you is how to interpolate the direction of travel and with experience doing this how to guesstimate an initial course and approx. speed for your future target. The turn towards the bearing and speed to 10kts ( I normally go to 15) are all good initial actions and certainly within a few minutes u can determine approx. direction of travel and whether that contact is moving fast or slow. If that bearing to the target is steady and it is getting bigger in your sight picture but is travelling fast then its time to get the hell outta the way lol or at least prepare a good sternshot. In general though it will be a slowish moving merchant. Jaystews description of how he guestimates the initial range is important. This is what we in the trade would call "the seamans eye", it develops over time. In game I think it is similar that the more you practice this initial guesstimations the better u will learn to determne wheter it is an appropriate target you can intercept. Keep trying is my advice but do not look for a perfect solution, remember to use the visual clues available to u through uzo/binos. Is the smoke fainter or stronger, can I now see mastheads or silohette of a ship. From what I can see you are so close to getting to grips with this, just trust your instincts a bit more. remember this will not be the information you will fire your torps on this is just initial can I intercept, which way is it going and how fast and is it a viable target for me. Keep the faith Herr Kaleun.:yeah:

Oh don't worry, faith is not lost, I love this sim no matter how frustrating it is at times.
I Jaystew's description is very promising, and your statement about the "seaman's eye" helps a lot also.
I have for the longest time how the crew of any vessle was able to judge distance and course of a distant contact. What you say makes sense.

This sim makes it all the more impressive how the crews of these vessles were able to do as they did, without the marvels of GPS, and other such things. It is really incredible.

One additional suggestion
 

When you initially get the observation and take bearing and turn on course, might be worthwhile to drop down and try to get a range approximation from the sonar guy. Problem with this is it slows your interception and u may lose the contact. The way I try is an aggressive burst towards that contact. Watch the direction his bearing is going and follow it or put ur course left or right of it, e.g his bearing has been drawing left 090, 085, 080 at each observation then I would steer maybe 060 and go to flank/full between observations. Same if bearing is drawing right e.g 090, 095, 100 then I would steer maybe 130. If after a period of time I am not any closer e.g 45 mins to 1 hour then I would probably give up as I am just wasting valuable fuel on a fast moving contact that may kill me or be able to outmanoeuvre a long range torpedo shot. I note where I came across the fast mover especially if I think its a fast moving high value target and may check this area out again in a future patrol to see if I have better luck. Happy hunting:arrgh!:

I am now being a sadist. LOL. Giving a try with real navigation with no map contacts (accept hydrophone) Hope my keel is strong. LOL

If you search the forum for "4 bearing method" (in silent hunter 3, 4 and 5) then you'll find method descriptions, including some movies, on how to determine target course based on bearing alone. This is basically what you do with only looking at smoke on the horizon. But you really need to figure on what angle the smokestack is hiding.

Looking at 1 degree changes over 2 minute time steps is not going to show anything. Moste likely your boat was turning and bouncing on the waves. Be more patient and consider time intervals in the order of 15 minutes or longer. Then you'll clearly see that the bearing fans diverge. The difference between 3 bearings can be used to determine target course. But if you move yourself then it get's very tricky, and you need more bearings.

This is a tool I made myself for this sort of tracking:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=147719

I hope you are having a better time at it.
 

I just had some major computer issues to deal with sorry I wasn't abandoning you. Have to re-install SH5 and basically my whole computer setup. Ugh. I hope your AOB/bearing problems are becoming more clear.

Found the method. Reading it now. Oh man has SH 5 taken on a new level. This is gonna suck at first, especially dealing with the CTDs, but this promises to become as close to real as one can get with this sim.
You all kick ass with the mods, and tutorials for this too often maligned sim.

Then...I find in the tutorials menu of the main menu, a 4 bearings tutorial. Giving it a shot now.

That tutorial is very good, I now have a good grasp of this method. Giving it a try in mission.