Just as the Mark-8 Flight Computer was called the "Whiz Wheel", the Mark-3 Plotting Board deserves an equally telling nickname; the pilot could do many calculations of the Flight Computer with it in addition to its capabilities of vizualizing flight paths, wind drift and correction, intercept calculations etc.
Since original plotting boards seem to be extremely rare and nobody manufactures them today, the art of using one for flight planning has become (almost) extinct. Thanks to our squad member JD Swann's efforts of recreating one as a free computer program, we can now dive into the old manuals and learning problems to find out, whether the Plotting Board can be of use for flight planning by the virtual warbird pilot as well.
We are still testing and actually learning how to use all the functions of the Plotting Board, but so far we have already gained some insights, solved a couple of the era training problems from the manual and even used it for planning a couple of sim-flights in DCS. It works!
If you want to check it out for yourself, follow the download link below, extract and follow the instructions:
Just as the original Plotting Board of the Navy pilots had its own Mark-8 Flight Computer attached, so does JD Swann's app. With the click of the C-button, you switch the plotter disc with the flight computer, ready to compute simple groundspeed, distance and time calculations as well as getting True Airspeed (TAS) from Indicated Airspeed (IAS), depending on altitude and temperature. How cool is that!
Stay tuned and check in later over the next months to find more details on the plotter app, how to use it, example problems and flight sim plans ...
Original manual for the Mark-3 Plotting Board with lots of example problems to use for learning the plotter. Download the PDF from here.
Photo and PDF courtesy of The Historical Aviator (Link).