Bullseye Calculator
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“Salt and butter” - never heard that one “Bread and Butter” is the UK equivalent saying …
This is a great technique for getting an idea of location and if the bandit is a threat to you … I Like it.
I use a visual method on a tablet - will post picture in a little while.
Ironman
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https://www.dropbox.com/s/zo9kix3jgzqe2fq/20170202_154045.jpg?dl=0
So you can see the flight path and Bullseye - with a couple or ranges marked on to the tablet all done with a “white board marker pen” so you can wipe it off and remake for every mission - you should know where you are on your flight path, or you could look at your HSD as this now corresponds with the flight path you sketch on your tablet so a quick glance that the map should tell you where the bandit is in relation to Bullseye and you.
Bullseye is NOT an exact science even the call you get from AWACS rounds up the bearing and distance - you don’t need to know to the nearest mile or deg where he is, its more important you know if he is a threat to you - 12/3/9/6 o’clock to you. you can then formulate a plan from there - if you want to track him and find his intention see below.
If he is not a threat now but you want to track him just put a X on the tablet every time you get an up dated position for him and you can track his flight plan - its good to work out if he is on a BARCAP of just going home for tea and biscuits.
Any way that’s how I do it …
Sorry there are some other images on the link - just ignore them only image 1 is relevant to this post.
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Hello Vandal… You would then do the math to figure the bearing from you to the bandit… What I like to do is place the bullseye in a position where planned threats will be in the 0-180°call from bulls. Quasi
You wouldn’t happen to be able to write up the steps and formulas up for me (i.e. using Dee-Jay’s example where does contact’s bullseye bearing go in these)? Once I see where the numbers go I can convert that to a spreadsheet formula. And yeah I’ve done the same thing with the bullseye but I am hoping to get away from that crutch in anticipation of starting to do multiplayer.
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Salt and butter for a combat pilot. Not that difficult if you make an effort (sure it needs a bit of training) … all you have to know by heart is the inter-cardinal values every 30°:
360 (N) / 030 / 060 / 090 (E) / 120 / 150 / 180 (S) / 210 / 240 / 270 (W) / 300 / 330
… the rest is a child’s play. (all you have to do is placing a dot. Then a second dot relative to the center.) … and this will not only help you for combat, but also for 2D orientation for navigation and also will help you for instruments flying. Rather than the Excel sheet, I would highly recommend you to have a bullseye printed on a paper sheet stuck on a side of your screen.
http://i.imgur.com/P0YBfQO.png
This will make you progress … calculator will makes you stagnate (or even regress). If you need help, the printed bullseye is the best help you can imagine. Trust Falcon4’s old monkeys
Yeah I think that will be helpful! But let me just defend the use of computers for a moment. We rely here on computerized math, we wouldn’t be chatting online without out. We wouldn’t be playing a sim without it. Geez the F-16 Fighting Falcon itself relies on computerized math to the extreme (i.e. CCRP, CCIP, fly-by-wire, avionics and on and on and on). So I don’t think it’s a bad idea to rely on computerized math. But I am grateful for the coaching and blank bullseye, I think it will help but I still want my computerized math. I’ll wager $50 that I can punch in four numbers quicker than you can accurately plot two contacts and figure the bearing. He who gives the range and bearing first by voice wins, because you are doing it in your head I’ll even handicap you range by 5 nm and bearing by 5 degrees whereas I must get within .1 nm and .1 degrees. The only thing is I need the formula first to prove that I can beat you to the solution
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“Salt and butter” - never heard that one “Bread and Butter” is the UK equivalent saying …
UK … but you are not “Breton de France”. So maybe you don’t know the “Beurre salé” (Salt butter)
Et hop … une pirouette
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Et hop … une pirouette
And hop … a pirouette (hop and spin)
Another French saying - I assume ??
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Lol i was going to post the exact same !!
to save your bacon of courseUK … but you are not “Breton de France”. So maybe you don’t know the “Beurre salé” (Salt butter)
Et hop … une pirouette
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When I was younger, I’ve tried that kind of stuff … and it is not valuable. The time you type it on your calculator … you’re dead.
It is just a mater of mental visualization. And if you can’t imagine it … just look at your HSI.
My present heading is 040°
I am the Green dot, posit : 160/20Nm
Enemy id the Red dot, posit : 220/30NmI take heading about 265° by the left and I will face the enemy.
It takes about 3 seconds to do this.
Deejay,
There is a reason why you are a pilot… YOU ARE SMART!! Ha ha ha I am not… I’ve known how to calculate bullseye since the beginning of Falcon about 20 years ago and I still cannot do it in 3 seconds. More like 4 minutes! lol
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This may help also to explain my pictures …
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So maybe you don’t know the “Beurre salé” (Salt butter)
What?? Lol, here in the US, there is salted butter and unsalted butter. Is it the same there?
This reminds me of beans in the US. On the west coast when they cook beans, mostly pinto beans, it’s called “beans”, haha, but in Hillbilly country here in the Southeast(TN/VA/NC/GA area) it’s called “soup beans”!!! WTH is going on!!!
C9
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@Cloud:
What?? Lol, here in the US, there is salted butter and unsalted butter. Is it the same there?
Sure. We even have the 1/2 salt butter (“Demi-Sel” between unsalted and salted butter).
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TALK ABOUT GOING OFF TOPIC !!!
Vandal must think we all drink in the same pub !!!
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Vandal, you do what makes you happy(that’s what BMS is about), but I can see where DeeJay and others are coming from, too. When I started working with bullseye I wanted something I could learn to do" instinctively". I wanted to learn to visualize it. I found an old broken compass that had a degrees bezel on it, and taped it to the edge of my monitor. Then, I basically did DeeJays’ methodology. At first I kind of drove myself nuts trying for hyper accuracy, but then realized I didn’t need to be hyperaccurate. The funny thing is,after awhile I was able to visualize it, and the compass has been retired.
I think of it this way:I basically want 2 things from a bull call, in the A/A situation. I want to know if a bandit is in my general area. If so, and I want to engage it, then the second thing I need to know is where do I point my nose to put my radar cursors on it.
This visualization approach also gives me an enjoyable bit of immersion in the A/G situation. Say I’m at 180 for 10, heading 000,Weaseling . I see a SAM site at my 4 o’clock, looks like about 10 miles away. I can call to my wingman “attacking SAM, bull 165 for 15”. I bet I’ll at least be “close enough for virtual government work”.
However, that’s not what you asked for :). So, I dug this up in my notes. I never really worked with it, myself, but hope it helps…http://wildernessarena.com/environment/navigation/use-magnetic-compass-triangulation-to-calculate-distance-of-object -
I wrote a spreadsheet when I should have been working many years ago that would give you a random position and a random position for the contact, then plot it. The plot was on another sheet so I would visualise and see how close my visualisation was.
In terms of doing it in ones head…there is a reason the pilot selection examine has so much mental maths!
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Vandal, you do what makes you happy(that’s what BMS is about), but I can see where DeeJay and others are coming from, too. When I started working with bullseye I wanted something I could learn to do" instinctively". I wanted to learn to visualize it. I found an old broken compass that had a degrees bezel on it, and taped it to the edge of my monitor. Then, I basically did DeeJays’ methodology. At first I kind of drove myself nuts trying for hyper accuracy, but then realized I didn’t need to be hyperaccurate. The funny thing is,after awhile I was able to visualize it, and the compass has been retired.
I think of it this way:I basically want 2 things from a bull call, in the A/A situation. I want to know if a bandit is in my general area. If so, and I want to engage it, then the second thing I need to know is where do I point my nose to put my radar cursors on it.
This visualization approach also gives me an enjoyable bit of immersion in the A/G situation. Say I’m at 180 for 10, heading 000,Weaseling . I see a SAM site at my 4 o’clock, looks like about 10 miles away. I can call to my wingman “attacking SAM, bull 165 for 15”. I bet I’ll at least be “close enough for virtual government work”.
However, that’s not what you asked for :). So, I dug this up in my notes. I never really worked with it, myself, but hope it helps…http://wildernessarena.com/environment/navigation/use-magnetic-compass-triangulation-to-calculate-distance-of-objectYah I agree with everything you said there and I do expect that if I keep flying in Falcon that I will get good at rough guessing the bearing and distance. Hopefully that will happen and I’ll take Dee-Jay’s advice to help me get there. Hopefully. But I still want to do what I set out to do and that’s make this calculator. Thanks for the article. I just skimmed it and I may be able to work it out from there, but I don’t think they are dealing with bearing questions there and that complicates the math a bit. I am still crossing my fingers at this point that some mathamagician will come along and make it easy for me.
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I wrote a spreadsheet when I should have been working many years ago that would give you a random position and a random position for the contact, then plot it. The plot was on another sheet so I would visualise and see how close my visualisation was.
In terms of doing it in ones head…there is a reason the pilot selection examine has so much mental maths!
Heh heh, yeah I think you get where I am coming from. Half the value in doing something like this is just to be tinkering.
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These sites are helpful.
http://www.185th.co.uk/squad_info/training/basic_n&b_bullseye.htm
And also trainer: http://www.185th.co.uk/squad_info/training/BullseyeTraining.zip
Thanks, -
I’m game, I’ll tinker too. The problem is determining the interior angle between you, Bulls, and boggie. Sketch these out to help… Ex1: boggie is north of you… you are 140 for 120 miles and boggie is 40 for 60 miles. The interior angle is 100°. Find distance between you and boggie… law of cosines, d=SQRT (40^2+60^2-24060cos100°)=143 miles…find angle between bulls, you and boggie…law of sines…A=arcsin (60sin100°\60)=24°…now you need to find the azimuth to turn to intercept… your back azimuth to Bulls is 140+180=320°…add 24° from previous calc…=344°… so boggie is 344 for 143 miles from you… fun ugh?? Ex2: you are 90 for 60 miles, boggie is 200 for 40 miles… interior angle is 110°…Find distance d=(60^2+40^2-26040cos110°)=82.7 miles…angle between bulls, you and boggie… A=arcsin (40sin110°\87.2)=27°…back azimuth 90+180=270°… subtract 27° from previous calc…=243°… so boggie is 243 for 83 miles from you…
Sketch some more out and you will see the problem with creating a progy is having it determine the interior angle to begin with and reckoning your back azimuth to yield your intercept course…
I’m going to have a go with Dee-Jay`s example and work with that… I’ll still move the Bulls so I generally work in the 0-180 half of the bulls… good luck,Quasi
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I’m game, I’ll tinker too… Sketch some more out and you will see the problem with creating a progy is having it determine the interior angle to begin with and reckoning your back azimuth to yield your intercept course… I’m going to have a go with Dee-Jay`s example and work with that… I’ll still move the Bulls so I generally work in the 0-180 half of the bulls… good luck, Quasi
Thanks Quasi I know what I’ll be tinkering with tomorrow now. Thanks a million!
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Sketch some more out and you will see the problem with creating a progy is having it determine the interior angle to begin with and reckoning your back azimuth to yield your intercept course…
I think I have this solved programmatically speaking. Albeit unelegant I think it will do:
We are trying to solve range and bearing to a bogey from our current position based on a bullseye call and our bullseye position as indicated on our HUD and FCR. The problem is we have to do our calculations from an acute angle.
Let’s set up some variables for this:
ap will be the bullseye point
bp will be the bogey point
cp will be the chump’s position (that’s us)aa will be the angle at the bullseye point (calculate)
al will be the length of the line opposite of aa (the distance between bp (bogey) and cp (us) for which we are trying to solve)ba will be the angle at the bogey’s point (calculate)
bl will be the length of the line opposite of ba (the distance between ap (bullseye) and cp (us) which we are given)ca will be the angle at our position (calculate)
cl will be the length of the line opposite of ca (the distance between ap (bullseye) and bp (bogey) which we are given)But because we must do the math on an acute angle we must determine if aa is an acute angle. If it is not an acute angle, we know that ba will be an acute angle so we can run our calculations from there. We have two more pieces of given information that answers this question for us.
bb will be the bearing from bullseye to b (the bogey) (which is given)
cb will be the bearing from bullseye to c (us) (which is given)THUS
aa = the absolute value of bb (the bullseye bearing to bogey) less cb (the bulleseye bearing on our hud)
[shorthand aa = ABS(bb-bc)]
IF aa is less than or equal to 90 THEN aa is an acute angle ELSE aa is not an acute angle.
[shorthand IF aa <= 90 THEN aaAcute = True ELSE aaAcute = False]
Even though we have variables above for some angles and lengths, we can’t really plug those in directly to a formula because if aa is not acute then it will blow up our math. So we have to abstract out to the acute angle and we can do this by assigning the previous angles (aa, ba, ca) and lengths (al, bl, cl) to variables which we can reliably use in trig functions.
So IF aaAcute THEN
xa = aa (where xa is the acute angle)
xl = al (where xl is the length opposite of xa)
ya = ba
yl = bl
za = ca
zl = cl
ELSE (we have to set this up where ba will the acute angle from which we do our trig)
xa = ba
xl = bl
ya = ca
yl = cl
za = aa
zl = al
ENDIFSo now we set up our trig to solve for xa, xl, ya, yl, za, and zl. We do not have to worry about where the acute angle is WE NOW KNOW xa is an acute angle.
DO TRIG FUNCTIONS TO SOLVE FOR BOTH xl AND zl
Once trig answers all angles and lengths we simply pass back the one length we are actually interested in.
To do this we simply go back to the same logical question we have already answered, was aa an acute angle? If so, then the length of the line between bogey and us (designated above as “al”) is xl (as was substituted above), otherwise the length we are looking for zl (again as was substituted in above).
[shorthand IF aaAcute THEN al = xl ELSE al = zl]
Now display “al” as our range to the bogey.
Now, I think there is a more elegant way to do this but this logic should work for range. As for our bearing to the bogey, we haven’t tackled that at all.