Change In Station

[Kirby_TFS]

Ive been trying to work through the change of station problems in the Chapter 11 Maneuvering Board document (http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...14308_ch11.pdf without any luck. Can someone explain the procedure as a walk through? Even when I look at the answers I still can't set up the MoBo to give me the solutions.

[XLjedi]

There are some handy shortcuts built-in to MoBo that allow you to do stationing problems much faster than the long-hand method explained in Chapter 11.

Are you wanting to know how to find the answer to stationing problems quickly with MoBo or do you literally want to manually draw all the lines as if MoBo was just a piece of paper? If you're going to treat MoBo like paper it's probably faster to just print out a 5090 sheet and do it with a pencil.

I assume you've already read thru the 40 page MoBo manual... I don't really give an explicit "stationing" example in the manual; but I do explain how to plot an intercept, which really is at the heart of all stationing problems. Admittedly, there is a bit of a large lateral thought jump that's required to make the connection between intercept and stationing. The easiest way for me to describe it would be to say, just pretend theres another ship already occupying the location you want to station yourself at. If the pretend ship is moving in the same direction and same speed as the target ship all you have to do is plot an intercept to that pretend ship.

I do have a couple more specific tutorials on stationing problems with MoBo. One shows how to simply determine a course for arriving in front of a target a specified distance. The other is a more advanced example that shows a two-leg attack stationing problem where you first plot a surface run at flank speed beyond visual range, and then a submerged final approach at 4kts to get within firing range as stealthily as possible.

The simple lead example is very close to the types of problems in Chapter 11. The more advanced two-leg approach is something that would be considerably more difficult to do on paper.

It shouldn't take longer than about 1-2 minutes to setup a simple stationing problem with MoBo. The two-leg plots take about twice as long. In which case, I like to have a toolbox of pre-drawn plots ready that I can pull from so I can simply make a few adjustments rather than have to redraw it all every time (but you need MoBo v1.1 for the ability to save and recall saved plots).

There's a sticky thread here in the MoBo forum titled "Tutorials and Examples" where you can find those stationing examples.

If you like I could still post the solution to one or two of those Chapter 11 problems.

[jmr]

That would be cool if you can do that.

[XLjedi]

Here's a pic for the solution to Prob1 on page 11-15.


If you have MoBo v1.1 here's the DAT file: CH11_Prob1.DAT
I used a scale of 2000 yds to 50 pixels.

[Kirby_TFS]

Thanks for the example. I've worked through the other examples and tutorials such as the lead distance and the second leg....btw they are very good and useful examples. My problem with solving this one was that instead of making the ship that did the actual moving the ownship or in this case the curiser, I was making the flagship the ownship which didn't allow me to set it up. I guess one question would be can you set up an intercept between 2 contacts and not use the ownship? I see now that doing a change of station requires the ship that does the actual change of station to be the ownship. I though I knew where the ships were going, but couldn't get the MoBo to give me a simple answer. BTW this is a great program. When I was looking at the answers on the paper manuevering board I couldn't understand why they were putting a parallel line to the DRM line at the end of the vector for the flagships speed. That part was really throwing me. Thanks for the answers, and if you want to post any other pratical solutions I would love to put them in my notebook collection.

[XLjedi]

Originally Posted by Kirby_TFS

I guess one question would be can you set up an intercept between 2 contacts and not use the ownship? I see now that doing a change of station requires the ship that does the actual change of station to be the ownship. I though I knew where the ships were going, but couldn't get the MoBo to give me a simple answer. .

Yes, MoBo is very flexible in that regard. The way the intercept feature works is that it always gives an intercept based on the connecting line. If there is no connecting line, the intercept is displayed in relation to OwnShip. But if you connect a contact to another contact it will plot intercept between contacts.

Actually, MoBo is designed to be usable for relative motion problems without even having a background image of a maneuvering board. I could've easily plotted the same solution with a blank background, or a nav map screen print.

Here's the same answer with OwnShip as the Flagship.

Notice above the connecting line between "Port Beam Station" and "Cruiser A" allows the "Port Beam Intercept" to be plotted for "Cruiser A" rather than "Flagship". That connecting line is also known as the DRM line (Direction of Relative Motion). CH11_Prob1_Rev.DAT

Originally Posted by Kirby_TFS

When I was looking at the answers on the paper manuevering board I couldn't understand why they were putting a parallel line to the DRM line at the end of the vector for the flagships speed. That part was really throwing me.

If I have time maybe I'll post an example as-if MoBo was merely a piece of paper and do a longhand intercept calculation.

Originally Posted by Kirby_TFS

Thanks for the answers, and if you want to post any other pratical solutions I would love to put them in my notebook collection.

If you have some specific examples you'd like to see plotted or a screen print of a nav map, post em.