Can of worms

[Zerstorer]

...

We discussed at great length how he marked up his plane to rocket and level bomb the enemy without a bomb sight from various altitudes.

...
 

My understanding is many pilots did this even during WWII....thus I don't believe it's gaming or cheating.

My current gunsight of choice in most planes is a single green dot.  I find busy gunsights distracting and can (usually...if I've not had too much to drink) eyeball the shot. I'm pretty sure my gunsight is not historically accurate but I would be most unhappy if I had to give it up.

[captain1ma]

installing a reticle, does not a good pilot make.... that takes practice!! 

[Tracers]

My understanding is many pilots did this even during WWII....thus I don't believe it's gaming or cheating.

My current gunsight of choice in most planes is a single green dot.  I find busy gunsights distracting and can (usually...if I've not had too much to drink) eyeball the shot. I'm pretty sure my gunsight is not historically accurate but I would be most unhappy if I had to give it up.

Same.. In my mossie I just use a single dot nothing else. No distracting clutter. Just judge speed and turn/climb rate and lead accordingly

[MrRiplEy[H]]

My understanding is many pilots did this even during WWII....thus I don't believe it's gaming or cheating.

My current gunsight of choice in most planes is a single green dot.  I find busy gunsights distracting and can (usually...if I've not had too much to drink) eyeball the shot. I'm pretty sure my gunsight is not historically accurate but I would be most unhappy if I had to give it up.

The only thing that makes the sight gamey is the distance readout. In real life a pilot had no certain way to tell when a target is exactly 1000 yards away.

[Tracers]

The only thing that makes the sight gamey is the distance readout. In real life a pilot had no certain way to tell when a target is exactly 1000 yards away.

Very true! WWII pilots didn't have the benefit of icons and given ranges.

[Bizman]

On the other hand, they had measures about each aircraft they might encounter and instructions how to estimate the distance by comparing the enemy plane to the circles and scales in their sights. For a rough estimation knowing a fighter from a heavy jabo or a bomber may have been exact enough, but after all there weren't too many plane types to learn on a single theater at a given period of the war.

[bustr]

The ww2 gunnery manuals in my historic pack cover using the 100Mil standard reticle ring or 100mph ring for estimating range. All countries pretty much used 100Mil as the standard. Didn't matter the units in feet, yards , or meters the Mil units described. Gun cam films showed many pilots under stress were opening up too soon and misjudging the range determined by the relationship of the wingspan to the 100Mil diameter main ring of the reticle.

Hitech removes that simple but vital bit of uncertainty with the range icons. It makes using only a dot reticle so possible in our game. And deflection shooting a tad easier since you don't have to know how to determine your range from the con only by the relationship of it's wingspan to your reticle ring. Our furballs would have a different nature to them if we didn't have the big red range icon doing the heavy lifting for us.

30ft wingspan at 200yds = 50Mil or 1\2 your main ring.
30ft wingspan at 333yds = 30Mil or 1\3 your main ring.
30ft wingspan at 400yds = 25Mil or 1\4 your main ring.

See a pattern emerging? Most fighters had a wingspan close to 30ft. Gunnery was not very effective much past 1200ft. Reticle main rings were 100Mil for the most part. 

[Lusche]

. In real life a pilot had no certain way to tell when a target is exactly 1000 yards away.

Nor do have we

AH icons generally show a 200 yards range band, D400 means the plane is anyhwere between 300 and 499 yards away

[mbailey]

i will test it out again when I am up again on limited fly schedule now but will let ya know when I am up and use the site for the 410

<S>
Molsman

If you need a set of buffs to shoot at let me know.  I'll target drone for ya

[redcatcherb412]

I disagree.

My uncle flew F100s active combat in Vietnam.

We discussed at great length how he marked up his plane to rocket and level bomb the enemy without a bomb sight from various altitudes.

He also helped develop other special techniques for ordnance delivery through the air, including nuclear.

My uncle went to the bomb range and practiced to get it right. He also shared his data with other pilots so they could do the same.

............................. ........................
And Kudos to your uncle and his practice.
Scariest close air support I ever was an intimate participant in was with F100s
Watching them turn in, lined up with you and come screaming in very low
dropping a MK82 500lber and watching the speed retard fins snap out until
it looks like a little girls metal jack from a game of 'jacks' as it slow motion
tumbles towards you.  You just know it's only feet over your head as passes
over and hits about 300 feet away.  The shockwave washes over you, the ground bucks
under you and you see bomb casing going hundreds of feet in the air and you
know it has to come down so you just go fetal to make yourself as small as possible.

I look back on that and am so very glad pilots like your
Uncle practiced and practiced.

[bustr]

In our game for ground attack, you can create reticle range guides for GV, buildings, hangers, and ack positions. It's a lot of bother to do it. Very often on full zoom a tank at 2k between the marks looks like a tank at 1.2-1.5k. Same for ack positions aiming with the Yak9T 37mm. Max range on the 37mm is 2.4k. The dispersion sucks.

You drive around in a jeep offline. Pull up 100yds from what you want to measure. Pull up the offline target so that it sits on or just back of the object. <.target range heading azimuth> The rings are 10ft wide on the target. Then you convert those results to width at range in Mil. Hitech provided a way to build gunsight reticles so 1Mil = 2 pixels. Unless there is a list somewhere with all of the object dimensions.

In my last historic pack I included the NAVY's ww2 glide bombing manual, which gets down to the nitty gritty of AoA, Mils lead past the target, approach speed and so forth. Helps make sense of the Mk8 reticle with 125 Mil stadia ladder. AtG rockets are really 800 and closer, less than accurate weapons, to which we rely on their lateral blast factor to kill most things in the game. Though just like ww2, the steeper your dive angle, the longer range you can get out of a rocket shooting at the ground. 

[Scca]

I saved a few of these and they won't display..  What did I miss?

[Zerstorer]

I saved a few of these and they won't display..  What did I miss?

They are .png files....need to save them as 256 color .bpm files.  Easy way (if you are using Windows) is open one with paint, use "Save As", choose "BMP picture", then at the bottom of the menu that pops up go to "Save as type:" and change it from 24-bit Bitmap to 256 Color Bitmap.

[molybdenum]

As a buff pilot, I have no problem with you sharing your kill-buffs techniques with others--very generous of you, in fact. Makes the game more challenging!
Avoiding rocket fire (except when in bombsight) isn't really all that hard to do, though. Just don't give rocketeers at steady level target.

[Tracers]

As a buff pilot, I have no problem with you sharing your kill-buffs techniques with others--very generous of you, in fact. Makes the game more challenging!
Avoiding rocket fire (except when in bombsight) isn't really all that hard to do, though. Just don't give rocketeers at steady level target.

Very true, missed a few times on a savvy buff pilot. Great on those that don't expect it though