understanding bearing ?
 

hi hunters,

im trying to understand bearing - in light of doing manual targetting.

im using olc gui mod and learning from the vid tutorial.

but im confused - still ! - with understanding bearing.

here goes: if my WO reports a ship at bearing 301 who's bearing is this, is it my bearing - from me to him or his bearing from him to me. if it is his does this make his bearing 59 degrees ( ????) to me - im lost, but feel if i can clarify this i can move on to use the plotting tools etc.

how does BEARING work, how come there are two, as above. if you watch olc's tutorial you see him drawing up a 59 degree bearing after his WO has reported a ship at 301 degrees.

i know i have posted this question before once and twice over, but i cant get my head round it, maybe a diagram would explain it better - i dont know.

i dont even know if i have made myself clear ??

i do find it a bit :damn: , but im not angry just confused.

i feel its all well and good being able to DO something but the secret to me is knowing WHY something is. at the moment im not that close to either.

im grateful for any attempts at clarifying this for me :up:

If a ship is reported bearing 301, it is from you to the target ship. Bearing 000 is straight ahead, so 301 degrees would make the target ship at your left, about 10 o'clock position.

301 is the relative bearing. In other words, relative to your sub, with 000 being on your bow, no matter which direction you are heading, and, as Captain said above, 301 being 59 degrees to your left.

True bearing would be the actual compass course that you would have to steer to put your bow directly on the target.
Example: If you were on course 270 and the ship was reported bearing 301, you would need to come to course 211(270-59=211) to put the target directly in front of you.

Hope that made sense.:)

bearing is super easy.

i suppose you are familiar with the "clock system" with aircraft.

for example: 12:00 is straight ahead, 6:00 is behind you, 3:00 is to the right, and 9:00 is to the left.

think of the "bearing" as being the "clock system" of boats, ships and submarines

consider this: while the compass is your "heading" and changes as you move in relation to the earth, "bearing" wont move, and is the relationship of all other objects to in relation to you.

000 = straight ahead or "on your nose" or "on your bow", 045 = 45 degrees right of your nose/bow, 090 = 90 degrees right of your nose/bow, 180 degrees = on your tail/stern etc etc.

"Ship spotted, bearing 135 degrees, long range" this ship is 135 degrees right of the bow, all you have to do is whip out the binoculars and point them at a "135" bearing and you should see a ship in the distance.

the only time your heading and your bearing will match is when you are heading exactly north.

to clear up more confusion (or create more ;)) every ship has its own bearing.

you dont care what the target ships watch officer would tell their captain about where to look for you. what is important is what your bearing to the target is. ie... if you see him on a 301 bearing, thats the bearing that gets put into the TDC.

Bearing is always relative to your ship. No matter what direction you are pointing (heading), your bow is always zero. The SH3 map tools should have a bearing compass tool that moves with your sub and turns with it. Also, if you look through the periscope the moving numbers at the top show the bearing.

C'mon! You guys all repeated what I told him, except I was shorter and clearer! :p

Yeah, but...well...y'know...but...

:lol:

when offering an explination on what could be considered a confusing or complicated subject you have to offer several examples. this keeps the reader/student/confused individual from thinking the rules apply only in the situation you have offered up for explanation.

the individual may come back and ask "Is the ship only straight ahead and to the left when im going north then?"

its not that you did a bad job, but every one of these "how does this work" posts on subsim has about 25 additional posts of different ways of thinking about the situation even though each post makes the same conclusion.

its true, everyone likes to put their two cents in.

but one thing i have learned through so many years of teaching others to fly airplanes is that its also true that one way of explaining something to someone gets no results, while another way of explaining it causes them to understand perfectly... even though all you did was re-word exactly what you just told them the first time...

anyone with teaching experience of any kind knows exactly what i mean. :rotfl:

PS i know you were mostly joking... so am i mostly

he sees you at his own personal bearing, which is what his watchofficer would tell him: uboat spotted at bla bla degrees. that is the value which is called Angle on Bow. also important


oh and don't eat yellow snow

I betcha you only have one way to tell your student " PULL BACK ON THE STICK ... NOW ":rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

yup i just say

"My aircraft" :up:

Flight instructing was probably the most fun job i have ever had. too bad the pay is rotten or i would still be doing it!

Being an instructor offers the best of so many aspects of aviation. you get to share the science, beauty and adventure of flying with a person who is enjoying all of these things aviation has to offer for the first time. seeing their reaction to the new world of flying is part of the greatness of the job. As a flight instructor you really share in the student pilot's sense of accomplishment every time that little light bulb turns on over their head.

The job offers a huge sense of satisfaction every time you turn out a new pilot, because lets face it, teaching is challenging... especially if it is a complicated task. and the student and the instructor both have a set of challenges ahead of them which they must finley tune into one another and meet those challenges as a team.

new student introductory lessons were always fun too, you just schedule it on a saturday morning, take off and hand it over to them, fly to a nearby pancake breakfast, enjoy a few flap jacks and the friendship of the pilot group and head back home and ask them if they are interested in learning to fly. 20 percent of the time the answer is "yes" 78% of the time the answer is "HELL YES!!!"

Lucky man... I always wanted to be a fighter pilot but my math was too weak. I don't want to steer this topic off course, but quick question, what do you fly?

thanks all very much for responding.

i understand whats being explained, but

something is not quite right - ive missed something or not expalined what i dont understand myself.

god dam it ! something is eluding me ! i just seem to go blind when confronted with numbers that have to work together to make something happen......

" i have his attention but not his mind..." :school report, maths, 1976.

and also i think GoldenRivet hit the nail on the head about 'expalining one thing in many different ways' it can get lost to the listener/pupil: everyone hears things differently.

i will be reading through your posts hoping to clarify what i need to understand.

i'll go back to OLC's tutorial and see if it all fits.

thanks again :up:

I was an instructor for several years in various types (i instructed both for a school and for private individuals) Cessna 150/152/172/182/210, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow, Piper Cherokee Six, and Piper Apache mainly

Corporate in Piper Aztec, Cessna Citation V, King Air C90 for a short time

I'm Currently working for a regional airline flying the SAAB 340B out of Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport.

I hope this helps rather than confuses things.
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...aringsmall.jpg

edit/add: see new version below plus d/l for bigger ver.

bert8for3 - this looks interesting !

thing is i cant read it - how can i make it bigger :hmm:

thank you all the same :up:

edit: i'm going to try to print it bigger !

No problem ... I'll put up a larger version for d/l on FileFront, but may have to wait until tomorrow morning as I have to go out in a minute.

Bigger version for d/l here ... http://files.filefront.com/Relative+.../fileinfo.html .

and new post version, 'cause I fiddled with it (it wasn't broke so I had to fix it :rotfl: ) ...
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p...ivebearing.jpg

I'll have a try with words

Heading is the course you are steering
Bearing is where you see the target from your bridge. Bearing has nothing to do with your course or his course, it is just where you have to look from the bridge or through the periscope.

example:
if the target is on a BEARING of 90degrees, he is to your right. Regardless where you are going or where he is going, he is simply to the right of your boat. The numbers on the upper part of your Uzo and your periscope indicate that bearing, if you look exactly to the right of your ship those numbers will say 90 and that is where you will see the ship. At that moment it does not matter which way you are sailing or which way he is sailing. some minutes later, the bearing will probably have changed if you both move on in whatever direction.

so...

Lets say you are sailing directly to the north and the target is to the north of you, your HEADING will be 360 (or 0) and the BEARING will be 360 (or 0) as well, because he is right in front of you

if you are sailing to the west (HEADING 270) and the target is again exactly to your north, the BEARING will be 90. Because he is now directly to your right.

again, the moment the ship is spotted and the watchofficer calls out a target on bearing so and so, it does not matter where you are going or where he is going, at that moment the bearing is where you look from the bridge. 360 (or 0) is in front of you, 90 is to your right, 180 is directly behind you, 270 is to your left.


if this gives you trouble, perhaps you can get some experience with landmarks or the sun. sail around the harbor, look on the map where you are exactly and where the harbor is and fool around a bit. or when you are on the open sea, look at the sun at sunset. sun sets in the west, if you are sailing to the north you will see the sun somewhere close to a bearing of 270 degrees (due west) while your course is 0 (due north) if you sail towards the setting sun, the bearing of the sun will be 0 because it is right on front of you and your heading is now something like 270

hope this helps