Real Noobie targeting question's
 

Ok I've almost got the manuel targeting and your probably goin to laugh but here it is ,..
how do I determine the AOB ? do i just guess at it by visual observations or ?
&
how do i get the officer to report the bearing and proximity of my target more than once? I hit the button that say's he will but he only gives it to me once.

any help or instructional videos and i will be greatly in debt to you :lol:

Welcome to subsim!!! :arrgh!: :up:


AOB is an art thats impossible to master, the best way to do this is to wait for a ship to be direclty in front of where your U BOAT is pointing so you can say 90 Degrees and be sure its right.

Remember AOB is not where the ship is in your view, its where you are if he was looking at you through binoculers.

Download and watch the videos found here, especially the first two. If you can't hit a target after watching these, well, I dunno what to tell ya. :smug:

Welcome to SUBSIM :up: RadiationRob


RDP

AOB measurement
 

cali03boss mentioned a method of estimating AOB using your hand, but I can't find the post right now. If you PM him, I'll bet he will explain it. It isn't perfect, but beats your Mark 1 eyeball and it doesn't require plotting and measuring on the nav map or external handling in MoBo.

The disadvantage, which it shares with any seat of the pants technique, is that it does little to alert you to a zig in the target's course. Many a torpedo is wasted by shooting it based on obsolete data. I believe a continuously updated plot is the best way to avoid this.

Still, cali03boss' hand trick is perfect for early observations where you are developing a rough plot, or quick shoot situations where you have no time for a refined solution.

I watched those videos and he does a great job explaining things , BUT when he gets to the AOB part he just basically sets it with minimal explanation, I still dont get it I just tried to attack a slow moving ship and got everything right except AOB until i accidently got it right (i dont know how i did it) lol ..maybe I'm slow or something, but there hase to be a way of explaining this so it makes since and there has to be a better way than just guessing at it..:hmm:

and oh yea can anyone plz tell me how to get my officer to continue reporting target bearing like he is doing in the videos linked above.

AOB is an easy concept in fact, it just requires a bit of practice...think of it like this:

Look from your bridge, TBT or scope at the enemy vessel. AOB is just how much his bow is deviated (Left or right) from pointing directly at you. If it is pointing directly at you, the AOB is zero, if the ship is completely perpendicular to your line of sight to him, it is at a 90º AOB (Which you will recognize easily because his masts and cranes appear thin, each side hiding the opposite, and you only see the sides of the superstructure and no part of the front/rear of it).

The difficult part in determining intermediate AOBs, which people usually fail to recognize, is that the AOB change is NOT linear with the amount of ship you are seeing. Let me explain that a bit: A ship that extends over, say, 10 marks of your scope at a 90º AOB will not extend 5 marks at an AOB of 45º, but instead some 7 marks. The 5 marks would instead correspond to a 30 AOB instead....

But people usually think when seeing a ship so angled that it apparently is only half visible "Oh, it is half as visible as normally, then it's 90º/2=45º". And that's incorrect! The variation in the aspect of the ship when it is angled will not follow a linear curve but instead a Sine curve

So to determine AOB by simple visual estimation, there is no substitute to practice....though here is a quick hint to help you: When looking at a ship you have IDed with the recognition manual, compare the silhouette of the book (Always a 90º AOB, a you see a perfect shot of the side of the ship) with what you see and think how much it is shorter than when viewed from full broadside. Is it about one half? Very well, that's a 30º AOB. About 3/4? That's about 45-50 AOB. Anything in between one half and the plain bow (zero AOB) you can set 15º, and anything between 3/4 and the full broadside length you can set 70º and you will be OK for a first approach. :up:

The easiest way to get started with AoB measurements is to...

1) Leave map updates turned ON

2) Plot the target course

3) Position your sub on a 90° beam ahead of the target


From that position, AoB can be determined with two simple formulas based on your bearing to the target. As you become more adept, you'll be able to turn off the map updates...

http://www.xl-logic.com/mobo/tutoria...0070827_01.PNG

http://www.xl-logic.com/mobo/tutoria...0070827_02.PNG

The accuracy of the AoB measurement is dependent of course on the accuracy of your estimation of the targets true course. But if map updates are on, you can plot it without error. It's a good way to get started easily on the concepts.

That last post was brought to you by the author of MoBo, the Electronic Maneuvering Board and Dead Reckoning Tracker program, available at SubSim for free download. It is perhaps the best tool to promote understanding of exactly what is happening when you stalk your target. It will explain AOB, submarine positioning, it plots the most efficient intercept course and speed, and it reproduces the exact functions of a submarine tracking team.

The learning curve is a little steep, but nowhere near the learning curve for SH4 or SH3 themselves. Download it and see what works and what doesn't work. It is the best tool available for understanding the concepts of manual targeting. Ok, seadogs, here it is: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=116572

i will try to help you understand AOB. i will explain to you AOB, as i understand it, and i have no problem with estimating AOB, and course, just by looking at the ship, theres got to be a time
when you have to trust your own judgements, if you want to be any good, really.
i have some pics to demontrate AOB for you.

the way i see AOB, it is the angle i see of a ship, from my line of sight, to the bow of the ship. my line of sight is always the aiming wire of the periscope.
in pic one, you see my scope and aiming wire, the aiming wire always represents a zero degree AOB to me.
http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/6...3105ad4.th.jpg
now in pic 2, im going to put a ship there, and when i look at the ship, all i can see is the bow, not port or starboard sides. since
all i can see is the bow, im going to call this zero degree AOB.
since the target is at my zero degree bearing, and heading straight for me, his course is 180 degrees, taking the targets bearing of zero degrees, adding 180 degrees
to its bearing, since it was 180 degrees or less, adding or substracting AOB, which in this case is zero, and theres your course and AOB of the ship.
http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/8...3151iq8.th.jpg
now in pic 3, you see that the angle is different than the previous example. the bow is off my line of sight, which is the aiming wire of the scope, twenty degrees.
since the bow is twenty degrees from my line of sight, and i see the port side, this is called 20 degrees port. the ship turned to its starboard side twenty degrees.
course would be: zero degree bearing, add 180 degrees, add AOB, since its a port angle, of 20 degrees, and its course is 200 degrees.
http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/7...5732ph3.th.jpg
now in pic 4, the ship turned some more. the angle of this picture is deeper than the previous on, so it was a greater numerical value, this angle is 45 degrees port.
on the ground, if the ship was moving on its couse, the deeper its AOB, the father away he will pass you.
the course for this ship is bearing 0, less than 180, so add 180, then add AOB, its its a port AOB, of 45 degrees, and the course is 225 degrees, 0+180+45=225.
http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/6...0175ak3.th.jpg
in pic 5, the ship was turned again, and now you can see the wholw port side, from bow to stern, this is a 90 degree AOB. its has turned 90 degrees to port from my
aiming wire/line of sight.
course for this ship is bearing 0, bearing less than 180, add 180, then add AOB, since its a port AOB, 0+180+90=270, the course of this ship is 270.
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/4...5167gg4.th.jpg

in pic 6, we have come back to the reference point again, cus now we will go to the starborad side for AOB'S
http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/8...3151iq8.th.jpg
in pic 7 , the ship's bow has turned left, and his bow is twenty degrees to starboard from my line of sight/aiming wire.
this AOB is called 20 degrees starboard, since all i see is the starborad side.
course for this ship is: bearing less than 180, add 180, subtract AOB, since its a starboard AOB 0+180-20=160
course for this ship is 160 degrees.
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/6...0404sk2.th.jpg
pic 8 is 45 degrees starboard AOB, course for this ship 0+180-45=135 degrees.
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/3...0355by4.th.jpg
pic 9 is a 90 AOB, you can see the whole length of the ship, on the starboard side, so it is 90 degrees starboard AOB.
course for this ship is: 0+180-90=90. ships course is 90 degrees.

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/5...4496fx3.th.jpg
that took care of acute angles, and targets that are closing, i hope that helps, i dont want to get into obstruse angles if i dont have too.

I would say there are 3 main ways of determining AOB:

1. Eyeballin' it. Using your hand, comparing it to the recognition manual's pictures (including the 45 degree one), and other such methods are often good enough for short range shots. This should serve you well enough for shots 1200 yards and less.

2. Knowing the target's course. If you know the target's course then you cna just drag the AOB dial around until the nose of the target in the wheel is pointed at the course you know the target is going. Bam, instant AOB. The best way of knowing target course is via 2-10 plots using sonar/radar/visual and connecting them with a straight line.

3. "Visual Squish" Technique. As a ship turns from 90 AOB toward or away from you the ship appears to be shorter visually. One can count how high and long a ship is in the recognition manual and form a ratio. Say the ship is 200 yards long and 100 yards high. If you then find that the ship is 15 marks long and 10 marks tall then you can figure out how visually squished the target is and then find out the AOB.

Ship Length: 200 yards
Ship Height: 100 yards
Aspect Ratio: 2.0

Apperant Ship Length: 15 marks
Apperant ship Height: 10 marks
Apperant Aspect Ratio: 1.5

Apperant Aspect Ratio / Aspect Ratio = | Sine ( AOB ) |

Real WWII US Subarmines had a stadimeter-like device to measure this visual squish. It worked just like the range stadimeter but horizontally instead of vertically where you could align the left tip of one image with the right tip of the other. This combined with the range information and ship length would give you an AOB solution quite nicely. Unfortunately it's not part of the game. Patch maybe? Mod even?

Sorry but that's incorrect :p It's the german UBoots who had that, not the US submarines. Aboard US submarines the primary method of determining AOB was by plain eye estimating (Your #1 described one), then as more data from the target was available from succesive observations, and a plot has been established, AOB could be measured and checked against visual estimates :yep:

I was unaware that u-boats had any kind of split optics; I thought they had to do everything by hand/head. Any pictures or period explanations?

Steve,

look at this thread here: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=117480 :up:

Yeah I'm wrong. There was the lingering doubt in the back of my mind as to which country actually had that gimmick. Unfortunately for you it was far easier to express an opinion faithful in anyone jumping at proving me wrong if I indeed was than actually getting my facts straight before posting.