Spitfire Gunsight adjustment?
 

I adjust the top gunsight ring for my preferred guns convergence at 200yds but not sure of the function/purpose of the lower ring as it seems to do exactly the same as the top ring regards placement of the cross hairs with respect to the edge of the gunsight ring. The upper ring is calibrated in Yards and the lower ring in feet but covers a much smaller distance - I am curious as to its function/purpose and cannot find any info?

Put in the estimated wingspan of your target to get the correct distance...

For example 32 ft for a Me109.

Excellent, many thanks!

Wow!

Can someone post some more explanations (and pictures) guys?


This sounds like really interesting stuff!

~S~

I have been playing about with this but I dont think it works properly. What I do is this:

1) Set the sight to the guns convergence (remember its in yards, there are 110 yards in 100 metres)

2) Set the lower ring in feet for the wingspan, eg 32 ft for 109, 66 feet for JU88 (cheers wiki!).

Now this adjusts the size of the cross. It is my understanding that when the enemy aircraft wingtips are toughing the cross hairs inner edge, it is the required distance (i.e. the top ring) from you, i.e. in convergence.

However in testing with the icons (showing distance in KM) I find that the sight picture looks incorrect. I must stress I might be doing this wrong!

Anyway I will take some screenshots and post them so you can see what im doing.

If you set the dials correctly (ie in line with your convergence and enemy wing span), currently the enemy will be in range when his wings span from the centre dot to the inner edge of the cross-hair. If you prefer the enemy to be in range when the wingtips touch both edges of the cross-hair, then just double the range on the top ring (which tells the computer what range your guns are zeroed to). This is how it is at the moment as far as I know from testing it.

As to how it was in reality I have no idea. I always used to thing that wingtips touching the crosshair was standard for being in range.

British ac had 105mill gunsights, simply put a FW wing tip to wing tip in your sight ring is 100m away - half the size in your gunsights (dot to edge of circle) and he is 200m away, etc.

A BF109 is pretty well similar but a HE111 has approx twice the wing span, if he is wing tip to wing tip in your sights then he is 200m away. So, if your convergence is set to 200 yds (very slightly less than 200m but close enough in combat sits) you can gauge the distance of your ac to your gun convergence.

The sight crosshairs can be moved to correspond to set distances/wing spans but the Spit/Hurri gunsight circle remains unchanged and the rule still applies (if you are Ok with estimations based on flying Spits in IL1946).

Not used Icons so interested to see if there is a dicrepancy.

EDIT: Checked and spot on.....

The wingspan adjustment bars are yet to be tuned. They are still a little way off but will in time be tweaked.

Ahh, that makes sense now... sort of. I will see what it looks like when I put the aircraft from the dot to the edge of the crosshair (though it means making a final adjustment before firing to put the dot on the centre of the enemy A/C)

I will try later at home and see how it looks