[BS8th_Jaw]

Actually... the use of the Gyro site in ww2 was not mainly used for ranging, it was used to assist pilots in making effective deflection shots. Actually most pilots when they got the hang of deflection shooting and proper ranging no longer used the K-14 gyro site.

Read the following, it is a PDF of a p47's handbook describing exactly what the gyro was used for and how to use it - http://www.blacksheep8th.com/files/K-14%20Gunsight.pdf .

Actually heres a slightly more detailed tutorial on exactly how to use the gyro site in the game. Its a little long but it explains the basics and also gives you vital information so you can constantly change your range and still be able to use the site.

The Gyro Site
Step one:
Go into your setup for your game, under controls and setup your bombsite keys. You will need the site increase, site decrease, -controls the site range-
slip angle increase, slip angle decrease, -controls the wingtip size to use- and bombsite auto buttons assigned.-enables and disables gyro-

Step two:
Next, setup a quick mission, and select the p51-D20 as your aircraft and spawn

Step three:
Next, hit your bombsite auto button that you assigned to turn on your gyro, now you have three options here, you can use fixed plus gyro, gyro only, or fixed only. Toggle through the options with your bombsite auto button

Step four:
Now that the easy part is done, comes the hard part. Figuring out the range. The way the gyro works, is it expands or retracts to a certain range that you set, thus basically giving you a range finder in your cockpit making shots easier, this way you can find your convergence point easier instead of guessing all the time - although the main use of this special site is to assist pilots in making deflection angle shots (thats the reason that the piper moves all the time.

Now I will explain the process in doing all this.

Each airplane in IL2 has a site inside the cockpit, now each site has a circle on it, the circle is adjusted to reflect a range of 150m (basically when the enemies wings are within the diameter of the circle that means he is at 150 meters distance, open fire) (the default gun range in-game). Now, taking this bit of information lets do a little bit of Algebra.

The p51 has a site which reflects a range of 150m, when you turn the gyro on the piper is defaulted to the default range of 150m (the same size as the circle). So what were looking for is the amount of meters the site travels with each click on your keyboard. So, our clicks would equal X.

Now, through a little bit of time ingame I have figured out exactly how many clicks the piper can be increased/decreased by, this number is 61 clicks total either way.

With this given information we can form the following equation, 150=61x. Now, to get X alone (the objective in most algebra problems) we have to divide 150 by 61, to which we receive the result of 2.459 (rounded it equals 2.5 meters). So from our original equation of 150=61x, the second step would look like 150/61=x, third step is 2.459=x.

With this given information we now are able to figure out our site range. The default as I stated before is 150meters, say we set our guns to 250 meters - all you have to do is take your range you have set, which in this case is 250 meters, divide it by the number of meters per click which is 2.5 meters, which returns a result of 100 meters for an increase, then take 100 and divide that by 2.5 which gives you a result of 40 clicks. Then input the 40 clicks on the piper and once set you should be at 250 meters.

An easier way to think of this is like so. 2.5 x 10 = 25 meters - this is telling you that every 10 clicks on the piper increases your site range by 25 meters. With this information its slightly easier to increase your range when needed. For instance, if my guns are set to 175 meters, in order to get the correct ranging on my gyro all I need to do is increase it by 10 clicks (because 10 clicks is equal to 25 meters increase).

Now, with this information known, keep in mind that the gyro will only go out to a range of 150 meters increase (meaning you can only set your guns to 300 meters to get and effective range reading, this would be a total of 60 clicks on the gyro site. Anything higher on your guns and you will just simply have to guess.

Now, with all that information known, heres how your actually supposed to use the gyro. Like I said, the gyro isn't a range finder (although it works that way) its actually a tool used to help you make deflection angle shots. Using the range thing with the deflection help will help you make deflection shots at that range. This is all fine and dandy if you can keep yourself an equal distance from your enemy, but this never happens in battle, your range is constantly changing. So the range plus deflection thing will really only work on your first or second shot, when your target is a known distance.

To use the deflection part, you will have to do the following:
After your first shot on your enemy, he is usually turning and trying to get away, the way you use the piper is in a turn you will need to be constantly adjusting your piper to the size of your enemy's wingspan. For instance, in a sharp left turn you will have to either increase or decrease your piper to the wing size of the enemy aircraft, that is the only way you will make a successful deflection shot.

A better explanation can be read here.
http://www.blacksheep8th.com/files/K-14%20Gunsight.pdf

This is a copy of the p47 k-14 gyro site manual, and it explains things very well.

I hope this is easy enough to understand, all you have to keep in mind is only to increase or decrease your sight range by 25 meter jumps and you will be fine. So basically only use the following ranges in IL2 for your guns: 150m, 175m, 200m, 225m, 250m, 275m, 300m. Doing this will allow you to use the piper correctly and hopefully will allow you to make excellent shots and get kills the first time :wink:

the ^ should really be stickied somewhere in here so people can see it.