Cannon track lead on moving target?

[Armored_Sheep]

In the game it is possible to lock flying air target and destroy him with cannon with caluclated track lead. I saw track where 200kph fast helicopter flying at more than 2km distance across the horizont is destroyed by a single burst of Ka-50 cannon in game. (maximum deflection shot)

 

My question is how is it possble?

 

Black shark does not have any radar and both target and attacker are moving plus the cannon has very low rate of fire and quite big dispersion on distance grater than 1km. How is the track lead calculated and how comes tht the low rpm cannon can be used on such distance on aircraft.

 

Is that an exploit or it is based on real world technology that realy works on Ka-50? I did not find any information about such feature in game manual.

Edited April 26, 2010 by Armored_Sheep

[Nate--IRL--]

Ka-50 does have a laser ranger though, I would have thought that range and angular momentum would be enough to calculate lead.

 

Nate

[Armored_Sheep]

Angular momentum? Theoreticaly yes, but is there enough precision? Do you have any references on that opinion?

[Nate--IRL--]

Angular momentum? Theoreticaly yes, but is there enough precision? Do you have any references on that opinion?

 

No, sorry, it is only my opinion/guesswork. I should have said that while the Ka-50 has the equipment to do this, I don't know if it can be used this way or could compute a firing solution.

 

But to be honest a Radar wouldn't give you any more information than a Laser in this case. Once you have the range, the rest is really just computing ballistics.

 

Nate

[Bucic]

What's seems to be the problem. Set up a mission with black hawk 2 km away going across your FOV. Laser Rangefinder to STNDBY, lock, cannon. Try to engage the black hawk in 3 different targeting modes and report back ([LALT+S], [V], [N]).

[EtherealN]

There is enough precision. So says the Ka-50 documentation by Kamov and operational pilots consulted in development, afaik. (Although 2km is definitely on the outer edge.)

[Frederf]

How is the track lead calculated and how comes tht the low rpm cannon can be used on such distance on aircraft.

 

Simple apparent angular motion I think. If the target is traversing at 2 degrees per second and the range indicates a 1.5 second flight time the cannon is steered into a 3 degree lead.

 

Isn't the 2A42 900/450 rpm? It's not all that low, especially at 30mm in which one can spoil your day.

[Armored_Sheep]

Tx EthernalIN for confirmation. Here is the track of this feature. Gunhit.trk

[Moa]

FYI: the correct term is "angular velocity" not "angular momentum" (although they are related).

 

The apparent angular veloicty is not a constant for a target crossing the flightpath of the shooter. For constant target velocity the angular rate is a maximum when dead ahead of the shooter and decreases as the target moves away from the shooter's longitudinal axis. The angular crossing rate also depends on range. All of this makes manual deflection shooting tricky (and that's not accounting for height differential, projectile drop, wind, air density variation etc). It's amazing we hit anything at all when we ignore the gunsight.

[EtherealN]

Also, as you can see in the attached pictures, you should note that most of the rounds fired missed. Second salvo missed entirely. But when you are firing 30mm High Explosive you really don't need many hits to ruin someone's day.

 

Another point to remember is that the Shark's cannon is mounted right at centre-gravity, which allows for greater precision than a cannon that is mounted at the nose and therefore has a longer arm for the recoil to act on. (Drawback being the reduced deflection compared to the cannon on Apaches, Hinds, Havoks and Cobras.)

Edited April 26, 2010 by EtherealN

[Speed]

Make sure you are in either ground moving target or air to air mode to hit a moving target with guns. As it says in the manual, while in GMT mode, the lead for your cannon will automatically be calculated. While the manual doesn't say so, in my experience, air to air mode calculates gun lead as well.

 

Ethereal, I always thought that the AH-64's cannon looked terribly inaccurate in all those gun cam videos!

[EtherealN]

Yeah, shorter barrel, less solid mount and longer arm = less accuracy. There can be an argument made that it makes up for this through it's look-and-shoot capability though and much wider coverage.

[Bucic]

Some documentaries claim that it's deliberately increased spread... Due to the gun being "too precise". What a b*s :P