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Board » Technical Support » DCs & The SOL Clock

Six Easy Pieces
The arcane chronometry of SOL
(with thanks to Richard P Feynman)
1. All commands, whether entered via sailonline.org or sol.brainaid.ie or the Zappe android app – delayed as well as immediate (but never the less slightly delayed) – are executed via the DC Editor.
2. There is full synchronicity between the DC Editors seen on sailonline.org, on sol.brainaid.ie and on the Zappe android app. You are looking at the same thing in each case.
3. The commands execute at the NET Times registered in the DC editor; always.
4. If you are using the hh:mm:ss clock on your pc to check and count time, this clock may be out of sync with NET Time; go to http://www.timesynctool.com/ to find out how to remedy this.
5. Only the commands entered (or corrected) via sol.brainaid.de are always WYSIWYG; the commands entered (or corrected) via sailonline.org generally are, but not always; the commands entered via the Zappe app never are.
6. These discrepancies can change from session to session, but are constant during a session; establish what it is, do the maths and enter an adjusted time to get the time you want.
Clipping along
In the chat on this subject, here is what I posted:

Kip: Getting the PC synched with internet time is step #1. Once I have that, I'll bring up a clock on my PC that displays hh:mm:ss and watch the minute turn over on both the PC clock and the SOL client.

I want the PC clock and the SOL client to turn over on the minute with a second or three of each other.

If they are not together, it's time to re-synch the PC time and reload the SOL client.

Once the time is within 'tolereance' levels, I'll use the 'delay for' dot on the predictor line and bracket the point at which I want to turn -- that is, set 2 DCs ... one early and one late.

Then, bracket again at a different 'delay for' setting. By refreshing the DC tab in the SOL client, you can see the different 'early' and 'late' times generated by following the orange dot.

But THEN, I go with Dingo's approach. I'll pick a DC time from the list of 'late' DCs that I can use as a backup if I don't make it to the PC for the rounding. But if I really care, I'll get up and stay hands-on.
A key point that I did NOT make clear in the chat is that setting three or more early/late DC pairs are needed to start seeing a pattern for a particular rounding.

That is, I'll set an early/late pair for {let's say} 40 minutes out, for 38 minutes out, and for 36 minutes out ... then go to the DC tab in the SOL client, refresh, and look at the early/late pattern. If the pattern looks good, I'll pick a time from the 'late' column and set the DC. If the pattern still looks random, I'll set some more early/late pairs and try again.

But this is just to get a 'safe' DC -- one that will allow me to get another 30 minutes sleep. It won't get me around a mark or past a headland as quickly as hand-sailing would.

--- Last Edited by javakeda at 2015-07-30 11:13:12 ---

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