Amen! :)

This is one of the best threads so far covering the subject.

There are few things more rewarding than see the eels detonate were you xpect them to after a manual calc.:yep:

Regards

/OB

You have been a great help Fincuan, if not for you I may have given up!:yep:
Hi Rockin Robbins, I have downloaded your quick 90 method & will give that a go later, in SH3 that was my main method, I would set everything up at 40 degrees (Port or Starboard), when the ship came into my scope at that bearing I would press the auto button & it would then follow the ship with the correct gyro angles, I would then launch a torpedo at around 20 degrees before & if it was a dud or not enough to sink it I could the launch another while the gyro angle was still ok!:yep:
I always use the 3.10 minute rule & this works out well with metric, but not so easy with imperial, would have to multiply the answer (in yards) by 0.9144 to get meters, then just shift decimal place to get speed in knots. This Torpedo school mission you don't have anywhere near enough time to do this!:doh: I will use this in the campaigns though unless the ship is too close, sometimes happens with TC.
Well that's about it, a little more practice & I can start my first campaign.:up:
Many thanks to all for your patience teaching this old dog new tricks, especially Fincuan.:D
Cheers.

That's very much true, and is also the primary reason why I never use the function in campaign. One small mistake and bam, your solution is screwed. The Dick O'Kane method is a nice tool to have in the toolbox, but for me it's not the primary one. Now that my current career is well into 1944, I mostly find myself in night surface attacks against enemy convoys, something where the O'Kane method just doesn't suit well. If you are to engage three merchants travelling in a line 800 meters apart from each other while keeping your bow pointed at the closest escort, you pretty much have to use the TDC. Developing the solution over time and gathering the basic data with the radar, while using the stadimeter only as a confirmation, guarantees that by the time the target is within torpedo range, the solution is nearly flawless.

If it's not a multiple target situation, or it's just two targets very close to each other, then the Dick O'Kane method is indeed much easier and more straightforward. A few other situations where I find myself using it are sonar-only attacks against escorted targets, when you can't ping to get the range, and radar-guided surface attacks in extremely bad visibility(<500 meters). Especially in the latter situation the TDC is almost useless, because you can plot everything on the map but there's no easy and precise way to feed the data into the TDC. With the O'Kane method you don't obviously have to input anything but the speed.

I just found what I was doing wrong, stupid me, I was bringing down the overlay ship and placing it's waterline on the top of the mast but forgot that I have to place the waterline of the actual ship on the scopes line!:88) How did I make that fundamental blunder I don't know, even in SH3 I had to do that, although with the 3 minute rule I was also calculating range differently as well.:damn: Can't get over this, what a goose!!:88) Oh well at least I now know!:yep:

No, you don't have to place the waterline of the actual ship on the scope's line :) In SH3 you had to, but with the stadimeter in SH4 it's not necessary. Note that I don't even have a scope line to place it on.

So much for that theory!:roll: Oh well practice makes perfect ... Hopefully!:yep:

Bit of a wide opening here for a bit of shameless promotion of the SUPERIOR imperial measurements. Unlike the kilometer, which means absolutely nothing aside from the famous shrinking official meter bar, the nautical mile actually MEANS SOMETHING IMPORTANT! I know it's a shock. You may sit if you need to.:rotfl:

A nautical mile is one minute of arc, 1/60 of a degree in latitude, or in longitude at the equator. But let's get to your .9144 stuff. No such nonsense is necessary and you can do everything in your head even quicker than a calculator. Ready?

A knot is the speed of one nautical mile per hour or sixty minutes (time). If you measure the nautical miles traveled in six minutes (1/10 of an hour) and slide the decimal (comma or point, choose the choice of your choice) one place right, you have the speed in knots. The distance in three minutes (1/20 of an hour) times 20 equals your speed in knots. You can surely do that quicker than the .9144 gymnastics with 3:10.

BUT patch 1.4 has thrown us a bit of a curve. Under 5 miles, our measurement tools give us yards, not nautical miles. What to do? Since the nautical mile is only 24 feet greater than 2000 yards, and some of us can spit that far, we can use 2000 yards as the equivalent of 1 nautical mile. So if you have traveled 1500 yards over 3 minutes, that's 1500/2000 of a mile or .75 miles. Just divide the 15 by 2, slide your decimal indicator of choice one place left and that's how far you've gone in nautical miles. But that's not what you're after! You want knots. The answer is already there. Just knock off two zeros and read your speed as 15 knots. Let's recap:

NEW 3 MINUTE RULE FOR PATCH 1.4
Take the number of yards traveled in three minutes, slide the decimal whatsit left two places and read your speed. Man that was tough! Break out the torpedo juice!

Yes. Standard "rule of thumb" for both naval and air navigation.

:hmm: In other words, using Robbins' "6 minutes = 1/10th of an hour":

• 1500 yds (for 3 minutes) x 2 = 3000 yds (for 6 minutes).
• Equals 1.5 nm for 6 minutes.
• Ergo, 1.5 nm (for 6 minutes) x 10 = 15 nm (for 60 minutes).

It doesn't get any easier than that. Thanks. Another rule of thumb.:up:

For me, after patch 1.4 that Mogami is always zig-zagging. Perhaps that is what caused you to get his speed wrong?

It takes him longer to travel from point A to point B than if he was going strait.

Predictable
 

For patch 1.4 they fed him a couple pints of sake!:arrgh!:

Thanks for that guys, that certainly make things easy, your rockin Robbins!:up:
That really is the same as metric:
Take the number of meters traveled in three minutes 10 seconds, slide the decimal whats it left two places and read your speed.
I had to say that!:lol:

Been following this thread, and with the help of Fincuan's picture tutorial and WernerSobe's excellent videos in another thread, I took my first stab at Manual Targeting in a Single Mission I quickly threw together. Getting the range with the Stadimeter was a freaking pain in the hind-parts, but with lots of swapping between Attack Map and Periscope View and manual range correction, I managed to sink two big, fat merchants! I was hunting a third one when my 'puter gave me a subtle message that "It's 3:30am already, you lout, and you'll have to get up at 9:00!" and booted me to Windoze! :p I think I'll need to download the Manual Targeting Correction Fix I spotted in the Mods section, and I also think my next Career will be with Manual Targeting...21 Patrols completed and a Tonnage Sunk in the six-digit figures is a bit of an overkill, methinks. Cheers for all the helpful info I've gathered, skippers! :up:

Hi, LukeFF.
I see tens (number 10) on your TBT display ... :o
It's inheritance of the past (SH3) ...
Disable corresponding lines in menu_1024_768.ini ...

Begin to play SH4 days ago....
No elec-torpedo in Dec 1941:damn:
Maybe we need U-Jagd tools in SH4:p
It's quite annoying to get a target's speed without target's length in recognition manual:damn:

Good stuff, it is a totally different game with MT :yep:


RDP

Which lines are those?

Very interesting thread.
In your post you often trust to the button: "estimate speed and course", but this mean is it an estimation or an exact data ?

I answer you this question because I use this tool to determinate AOB: http://mysite.verizon.net/ress1z18/id4.html . (somebody use it?) I had to print the wheels but it is rather fun to use. But I need to know the exact target course to use it and this is my problem. I usually use the "drawing method" to find it (I draw 2 points along the target course and draw a line. Then I use compass to find the target course where the line is crossing the compass wheel).

But I often find some differences beetween this method and the estimate course the button give me.

What are you thinking about that?

Hi, Luke ... look:
[G28 I121]
Name=Marking lines
Type=1026;Menu group
ItemID=0x28060000
ParentID=0x28000000
Pos=82,-89,860,590
Zone= 82 679 860 590 1 1 0x28000001 0.5 -0.5 0x28060000 -0.5 0.5 0 0
Color=0xFFFFFFFF
[G28 I122]
Name=Zoom
Type=1029;Static text
ItemID=0x28060009
ParentID=0x28060000
Pos=54,-274,46,19
Zone= 136 405 46 19 0 1 0x28060000 0.0627119 -0.464407 0x28060009 0 0 0 0
Color=0x66B26680
Font=1
TextFlags=0x14
;[G28 I123]
;Name=DegHL
;Type=1029;Static text
;ItemID=0x28060008
;ParentID=0x28060000
;Pos=211,-89,20,18
;Zone= 293 590 20 18 0 1 0x28060000 0.245763 -0.150847 0x28060008 0 0 0 0
;Color=0x66B26680
;Font=1
;Text=2015
;TextFlags=0x11
;[G28 I124]
;Name=DegHR
;Type=1029;Static text
;ItemID=0x28060007
;ParentID=0x28060000
;Pos=627,-89,20,18
;Zone= 709 590 20 18 0 1 0x28060000 0.728814 -0.150847 0x28060007 0 0 0 0
;Color=0x66B26680
;Font=1
;Text=2015
;TextFlags=0x11
;[G28 I125]
;Name=DegVB
;Type=1029;Static text
;ItemID=0x28060006
;ParentID=0x28060000
;Pos=136,-428,20,18
;Zone= 218 251 20 18 0 1 0x28060000 0.157627 -0.725424 0x28060006 0 0 0 0
;Color=0x66B26680
;Font=1
;Text=2015
;TextFlags=0x14
;[G28 I126]
;Name=DegVT
;Type=1029;Static text
;ItemID=0x28060005
;ParentID=0x28060000
;Pos=136,-143,20,18
;Zone= 218 536 20 18 0 1 0x28060000 0.157627 -0.242373 0x28060005 0 0 0 0
;Color=0x66B26680
;Font=1
;Text=2015
;TextFlags=0x14

Big thanks to everyone for the advice. Your help converted me to manual targetting :know:

I shelved SH4 twice in frustration, after reading this thread and one other, I just DL'd Werner Sobes videos. I'll watch them shortly and hopefully I can make some sense out of it all.

Thanks Guys.