Manually plotting an intercept course

[aatyler]

Hello every one. This is my first time posting on the forums but I've been perusing them here and there for several years now. I have been playing silent hunter since its debut with Silent Hunter 1.

I'm a big fan of realism and I enjoy doing things by hand. I've seen several posts on calculating intercept courses by using the protractor but with little mathematics. Being that I am an engineering student I enjoy math and wrote the attached document on how to calculate the intercept course.

It's based on the law of sines and requires a basic understanding of units (what a kilometer is, what a knot is, how units work in an equation, etc) and a little trigonometry. I hope it isn't to "mathy."

In any case, it shows a way to calculate the course to intercept a target with a basic scientific calculator. Of course, it requires two things:

1) a guess of the targets speed and course
2) your own speed

Once you make a calculation, it will yield a course that will ideally have you and your target arriving at the same time. To adjust for this, calculate the course at a speed slightly slower than the speed your actually going to travel, thus, you will arrive slightly before the target.

Now, this formula, in theory, could be used to calculate the manual solution to the torpedoes, but, there would be some corrections from courses to gyro angles and such, but I didn't write this guide with that in mind and honestly, in reality, a captain would not calculate that himself.

If anyone has any questions feel free to PM me or reply to this post and I'll make any corrections or further explanations as best as I can.

Happy hunting everyone!

Here is the link to the document: EDIT (Version 1.1 uploaded to make some clarifying additions)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4O...it?usp=sharing