Navigation in the Stalingrad airspace

[andyw248]

I noticed that it's quite challenging to fly around in the airspace west of Stalingrad.

 

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Uranus I understand that the area between the rivers Volga and Don will be the major battle area for IL-2 BoS. Basically everything east of the Volga belongs to the Soviets, while everything west of the Don belongs to the Germans. The area in between includes the besieged area of Stalingrad in its center (between Stalingrad in the east, and the town of Kalach in the west), held by the Germans; and the advancements of the Red Army north and south of it.

 

Now, looking at the snow covered landscape from 1,000 meters, it seems kind of difficult to navigate. To familiarize myself with the situation, I started from one of the Stalingrad missions (it doesn't really matter which one, they are all taking off fairly close to Stalingrad), then flew westbound until I could identify the River Don (that's about 85 kilometers west of Stalingrad), then followed it to the north and west until I could identify the "Lapino" area (that's where the Don turns west, and then south).

 

To me it looks like the River Don is a major feature that helps me navigate in this region (rather than the Volga, which the Germans never crossed).

[Fifi]

Yes, a real challenge to navigate in this white desert.

Villages all looks the same, not that much forest to rely on, rivers are fading in the white landscape, landmarks almost unexistant, and drawing distances are short...

Even airfields, when not hard runways, are very hard to spot.

All in all, a few turning dogfight later, i'm completely lost! 

[Meteor2]

An interessting point.

Please imaging, when in addition to the snow, the weather is bad or it is night...

For this, we need a flight plan and for this we need

- map possibilities as in CoD or Silent Hunter or

- a printable map where distancies and times can be calculated

in order to draw a realistic flight path to target and back to base.

 

And then the wind conditions are of importance, too. But that is another story.

[coldViPer]

Yeah, after loong dogfight have to fly few circles to find out where the h*ll I am. I always try to keep my GPS updated in my head but sometimes it is very hard while situation is on.

[=38=Tatarenko]

Two things that help - have all the objects showing as the bridges are very black and visible and drop gamma to 0.9 in settings to get rid of some of the whiteout.

 

But yes, the Don is a major marker as are the airbases. We'll soon get used to which base is which.

[Bussard_x]

Bf109 has compass that picks up radio beacon from airfield, this is the 3-pointer indicator, but this is currently not working. It is also used to point to the next way point.