Colourful but difficult I fear AndrewF. I shall reminisce for a couple
of paragraphs; please indulge me ;-)
In the Tornado we would put the sight above the target by a couple of
mils (milliradians) at 3,000 metres in a 10 degree dive, start the HUD
camera and make the armament system live (the gun(s) is/are selected
earlier, this is the final arming switchery); at about 1,500 metres you
lower the sight onto the target and start to track, banking into wind
(in the case of a crosswind) and open fire at 1,200 metres, firing for
one second max before starting your recovery at 4g (aircraft
limitation, 6 g is better ;-)) - minimum firing range 900 metres to
allow you to miss the ground and any ricochets. If the "pippa" (the
aiming dot) subtends 1 mil, imagine the area it covers at 1,000 metres.
If you are going to identifiy your target before opening fire, humans
are extremely difficult.
So that is my excuse ;-). I have never aimed at anything smaller than
a practice target (a Saab autoscoring target with a screen of about 7m
x 7m) or armoured fighting vehicles, both on ranges. This is why we
did not normally load anything other than HE/AP (high explosive/armour
piercing) mix of rounds - because a realistic target was not personnel
but AFVs.
Student story: when I was on the Tactical Weapons Unit, flying from
Brawdy and strafing at Pembrey range in South Wales, I was once tasked
against a practice strafe target which was missing 2 fifths of its
screen. Our ranging option was purely visual (unlike the radar
altimeter ranging in front line aircraft): we would wait until the
target was the same size as the pippa, pause for 0.5sec, fire for
0.5sec and recover at 6 g. If the target was 600f its intended size,
I would have got to 600f my intended range before scraping my tail on
the ground. Luckily I had a fine sense of self-preservation and I
fired "out of range" and recovered safely. The film debrief was
interesting watching for the staff and they all came to watch!
Actually, hare-coursing and badger baiting are alive and well in this
country, unfortunately. I see badgers at the side of the road every
week now and I think that they are too intelligent to run across busy
roads. Of course they might have been victims of the recent test cull
of badgers to prevent the spread of TB...
Chris
On 17 Nov 2003, at 18:43, andrew fildes wrote:
But the pinks make such a nice clean target, what? And there'd be a
certain irony in it too. Not to mention the photo opportunity.
It'll go the way of hare coursing, dog fighting, otter hunting and
badger/bear baiting - but then, they were working class 'sports' were
they not?
AndrewF
(Hand me my ferret, Jeeves...)
<|_:-)_|>
C M I Barker
Cambridgeshire, Great Britain.
+44 (0)7092 251126
ftog at threeshoes.co.uk
http://www.threeshoes.co.uk
http://homepage.mac.com/zuiko
... a nascent photo library.
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