german high speed indicator

[niklas]

Hi

over at the luftwaffe-forum, someone posted a picture of a german speed indicator for high speed aircraft (is was used in me163 and me262)

The interesting design feature is that it had 2 needles. The second (beginning at 400km/h) was comparable to TAS, compensated for pressure changes in different altitues.
How good the indicator worked is unknown (indicated speed to TAS)
 

niklas

[HoHun]

Hi Niklas,

I've seen this speed indicator (Fl. 22245) described before without any mention of any special capabilities.

If you compare it to the standard indicator (Fl. 22234) as mounted in the Me 109, the visible differences are top speed and scaling:

- top speed 1000 km/h
- 2.5 km/h per degree up to 400 km/h
- 3 km/h per degree above 400 km/h

vs.

- top speed 900 km/h
- 2 km/h per degree

The standard speed indicator would have spiral overlap in its display, so that at 820 km/h the display would be the same as at 100 km/h.

I'd speculate the high-speed indicator could have merely used a segmented scale to give the instrument higher resolution in the low-speed region where the exact speed was important, while avoiding spiral overlap in the high speed region by reducing resolution there.

It's possible that a better compensation method was used for more accurate read-outs, but I think this can't be concluded from the existence of two different hands alone as the resolution issue would justify their use by itself.

I'd be quite interested to learn more about this topic!

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

[Tac]

You handsomehunk. 1 of them is for airspeed, the other one measures pilot heartbeat per min    

[R4M]

That is some nice photo niklas!. So maybe the Me262 had a TAS needle too?  

Another thing to ask to be deleted in the other planes then   (just kiddin)

[ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: R4M ]