I leave mine set for 275.
When the Icon counter flips from D400 to D200, your actual range is 299yds. So when I see the counter switch to D200, I finalize my aim and fire, which means I'm about as close to hitting the enemy plane at my convergence distance as possible, maximizing the damage my F4U's .50's will inflict.
Quick shots at that range are really all you need to cut a plane in half or saw a wing off. A little tickle performs like a chainsaw.
I'll fire at planes as far as D600 at times (to get them to turn), but I don't get serious until he gets to D200. At close range your bullets do more damage, the target appears larger, and your required lead is less. It makes it easier to hit and kill.
Those are important considerations when you realize that unless you're wings are level, and you're flying level at 1G, your gunsight is "off". If you're pointing your nose up or down, you'll shoot "high", banked left you'll shoot low/left (which may appear high/left from your perspective), banked right you'll shoot low/right, and inverted you'll shoot quite low (which will appear quite high from your perspective). Pulling G's while firing adds more deviation.
Setting your convergence closer and firing closer will also minimize some of those effects, where setting your convergence further out and firing further out will increase some of those effects.
Your bullets will also "cease to exist" in AH at varying distances, depending on altitude. Your bullets "cease to exist" at closer ranges the lower you are, and will "exist" longer (fly further) at higher altitude. If I remember correctly, it is flat-out impossible to hit a target on the deck at 1000yds (900?)(because your bullets no longer exist), but you will still punch holes through the target at 1200 (or more) yards at 8K or so. That's really just some interesting trivia, more than anything helpful...
You can test these ideas using the .target command. Keep in mind that "groups" fired at this target will look better than they really are. The rings are 10 feet apart, which means that the center ring is 20 feet in diameter. So a group that patterns in the bottom of the "bullseye" or "10" ring is actually 8-10 feet low, and could be printing an area the size of your living room wall. Hardly a "tight" group, that will do maximum damage with bullets that simply punch holes in things (like .50's). Putting your shots in the "8" ring? WTG! You're 30 feet off! Hehe! On a target that isn't even moving...
If you hit the bottom of the 10 ring, that's like shooting 5 feet under the plane in front of you (with him on autopilot, hehe!) (Look at the picture in Shatzi's "Convergence" article on the Trainers page)
A good testing technique I found was to point at the target on "Auto-level", and fire when my speed was up to normal. Use trim to fine tune your aim. At first it will probably appear that all your shots are "good", until you zoom in on it and take into account the scale/size of the target. If you want to fire inverted, I needed to manually trim my plane to get decent fairly accurate results. And getting accurate "banked" shots is tough too (to see the effect of banking on aim-point). Using opposite rudder to hold "knife-edge" actually skews your results...
You can also see the results of firing while pulling G's using that target.
MtnMan
Wonder what the average hit% is in the MA... Gunnery is more complicated than most realize.
