Excellent work Reaper7!! I like the idea of putting the dials on a sticky backed photo paper, then putting them on a hard surface (like plexiglass) to hold them together. I found with continued use the hard stock paper would oval out at the center hole and allow the dials to move a bit. Your graphics are superior. Thanks for making a hand made calculator a desk top necessity!!
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Originally Posted by joegrundman
It's very nice, but what's the comparative advantage of this design over this replica of the historical tool here which includes a periscope overlay?
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Well for one thing, the AoB Calculator has individual degree marks for precise measurement. This allows for a more accurate map plot of a target when disabling the map option for showing a targets position. With a precise target heading (and target range) Angle on Bow will be found, completing the firing solution (short of speed estimation).
I'll be honest with you, their quite similar. But believe me, I hadn't even seen the original Is-was (or
whatever you want to call it) untill after I introduced mine. I guess necessity breeds ideas no matter what the decade. My first design of a three dial calculator (1. Subs Relative Bearing, 2. Compass Bearing, 3. AoB Bearing) came from a two dial calculator introduced by a fellow named Wazoo during the early Silent Hunter III days. Wazoo had a great tutorial for manually finding range with the U-Boats which I cut my teeth on. I figured by adding the subs relative bearing (the bearing seen along the top of the periscopes image or TBT) a better calculator for finding a targets position and heading could be made. I worked on the dials during the winter of '06-'07, cutting and pasting (no really I used Elmers glue to paste "Word" numerals and compass descriptions onto a dial; used Photo Shop to clean up the glue mess), then figured out how to get my feet wet in posting in a forum I'd only been a long time reader of. Up to that point, I hadn't figured out how to use the Position Keeper yet. I may not have made the Calculator at all since the Position Keeper does a
great job of calculating a targets heading and true north bearing. Anyway, the tool is extremely useful for the German side of play; and convenient for the American side to use when at the map station plotting a targets bearing and heading.