TDC bearing dial - ignore it?

[Airborne]

Hi there fellow skippers!

I'm just getting into SH3 and already went through the torpedo tutorial a number of times while working through Wazoo's excellent descriptions.

I'm now at a point where I'm asking myself: Is the TDC bearing dial needed at all when you plan to switch to "auto mode" (the little knob changing to red again) anyway shortly before you fire?
Wazoo mentions several times that you have to be sure to set it to -> 0 <- before you lay your hands on the AoB dial and put that to 90°.
As far as I can tell the bearing dial switches itself back to your current scope bearing anyway (right before finally lining up the scope with your target).

So shouldn't it be sufficient to just get the AoB right and if for some reason the bearing dial doesn't correspond to the actual scope bearing, when you switch to auto mode after doing your inputs, it'll get corrected anyway (and it won't affect the AoB dial, checked that). So you're always calibrating the AoB with the current scope bearing.

The only use of that dial should be when you plan to do the TDC inputs manually and KEEP the switch on manual. Though this means you have to be pretty observant of your target and update that bearing dial pretty fast. =)

Or do I have something wrong here and you really have to take care of the dial?

[looney]

In wazzoo's guide you are calculating the AoB at a later time. Therefore if you got your scope locked on the target and you set the AoB dial to 90° your shot will be miles ofcourse.

But yea if you made sure you got the scope on 0° you don't need to bother with it's dail

[joegrundman]

I don't think there's ever any need to use the bearing dial. It's always better to use the scope for this sort of thing.

But if you are already on your firing course, then you are right in thinking that if you have the scope locked on and plug in the correct AOB first time, then there is no need for any further adjustments

First you want to determine the AOB at the intercept point of your course with the target's course. There are two ways to do this: mathematically by computing the difference between your know course and target's estimatted course or by using the angle tool on the nav map.

Once you have the exact angle at the course intercept point, go to the scope/uzo screen. Set/lock the scope/uzo to zero degrees. Zero out all data on the notepad. Click on angle on the bow on the notepad. Manually set your previously computed angle on the angle on the bow notepad page making sure you select the correct direction of target across your bow, either port or starboard. Click the checkmark on this page. Click the checkmark on the main notepad page. You have just set the correct AOB at intercept point into the attack computer. You can now rotate the scope/uzo to the target and as long as the target does not change course, you automatically have the correct AOB as the target travels along its course.

Note: always zero out the data on the notepad once you have set the AOB because if you later use the notepad to set speed or distance you could have a resulting incorrect AOB if it had not been zero'd out. This is a good rule to folow once you have set any data in the notepad.

Hope this is helpful.