Old Weather Forum

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On the weather page, please enter: date, locations, distances (nautical miles and tenths), courses, and all the weather data in the columns outlined in red in the spreadsheet.
It is not necessary to record State of the Sea.
However, ice mentioned in the weather grid should be transcribed using the magenta Sea column.

On the events page please enter: ice, location information, and sailing information.
Aurorae, volcanic, and seismic activity should be reported in the forum.
The names of US Navy and Coast Guard ships met should be noted. This gives the science team a chance to compare weather readings. You can include all ships mentioned in a single entry without a time or any additional data.
Other events are optional.

One person can do both weather and events (Stream 1), but the system also allows one person to do the weather page (Stream 1) and a second person to do the events page (Stream 3).
Unlike in OW3, where three transcriptions were required for each page, we are doing only one transcription per page.

Every transcriber needs to enter the date.
The date is used to organize the pages.

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See Atalanta — General for some general background and discussion.
See Atalanta — Examples for a quick introduction to transcribing or a refresher.

See Transcribing Guide to learn how to transcribe the data.
Post in Ask Questions Here or this topic if you have questions.

Direct links:

• Tracker
• Spreadsheet
• Uploader
• Transcription status

I have reserved June, July, Aug, Sep 1941. Working with Randi. I am recently retired, so this may take some time. Greg L.

I'm glad you're aboard. Randi is a great navigator!

Hi Michael,
I've completed the Atalanta, June-Sep, 1941.
--Greg

Great job, Greg! I'll get to work on it when I finish transcribing April, 1875 for USS Omaha. (I just did the 28^th.)

The problem with typed logs!!! We were able to demonstrate to the science team that our spreadsheet method of data entry gave such good results that only one transcriber was needed for each log. For OW I, II and III, three transcribers were needed.

The typed logs are filled with errors, where one person takes data from one page and enters it on another, and their work is not checked. This is prone to errors, unlike our spreadsheet method, where we enter the data right over-top of the original value.

Here's what my voyage calculator thinks of these positions, and here's what a voyage would look like if we didn't take into account the course and distance information. My program uses the course and distance data to calculate where the end of a "chunk" would be. A chunk being that part of the voyage between two logged positions. It then compares that calculated position with the logged position. Next, it figures out the hourly North and East adjustments needed to get the two positions to agree. In this case, each pair of course and distance data need to be adjusted South by 0.31 nautical miles and West by 0.32 nautical miles. Drift values like these show that the logged position agrees well with the course and distance data. The differences are usually due to the effects of winds and currents. Drift values are usually in the range of 0.7 to -0.7 knots. So, the first chunk was OK, but there are problems with all the others. As you can imagine, trying to sort out a mess like this is no fun.

Chunk 1 ordinary Drift N: -0.31 Drift E: -0.32 Tries: 3 Line: 14
Warning: Drift E is quite large:, 5.0, on line 18
Chunk 2 ordinary Drift N: -2.90 Drift E: 5.03 Tries: 3 Line: 18
Chunk 3 ordinary Drift N: 0.31 Drift E: -2.41 Tries: 3 Line: 26
Error: Drift E is very large:, -9.3, on line 38
Chunk 4 ordinary Drift N: 0.82 Drift E: -9.30 Tries: 3 Line: 38
Warning: Drift N is quite large:, -4.5, on line 42
Error: Drift E is very large:, -252.4, on line 42
Chunk 5 ordinary Drift N: -4.48 Drift E: -252.36 Tries: 3 Line: 42
Error: Drift E is very large:, 56.0, on line 62
Chunk 6 ordinary Drift N: -2.92 Drift E: 55.96 Tries: 4 Line: 62
Chunk 7 Consecutive Line: 63
This voyage has errors. Quitting program.



Here's where the ship probably went...

The voyage for 1941 with many thanks to Greg for his great work. The typists who worked on this log should have been as accurate. You can see a plot of the voyage here and, for more detail, you can download the KML file and view it with Google Earth.

These are the weather statistics for this voyage:

• 1204 records for DirT
• 1174 records for Kts
• 1201 records for Baro
• 1202 records for Dry
• 1202 records for Wet
• 1184 records for Weather
• 1151 records for Clouds
• 24 records for From
• 1155 records for Amount
• 1171 records for VisM

There were 10,668 weather records for Atalanta in 1941.
Atalanta travelled a total of 9,674 miles.