462

Saab's
lighter
sight
ALMOST 30 years ago British scien-
tists and engineers began work on
the first gyro gunsight, a device which
promised to revolutionise the art of
air-to-air fighting. The fixed-graticule
sights in widespread use at that time
made large demands on the skill and
judgement of the fighter pilot, requir-
ing him to estimate the deflection
angle between the line of sight to the
target and the direction in which his
guns were pointing.
Relying on the fact that the rate of
turn of a fighter is proportional to
the deflection angle required, the
Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farn-
borough was able to produce a sight
which greatly improved the accuracy
of the average pilot's gunnery.
Although some air forces continue to
this day to use gunsights which are
little more sophisticated than the
traditional lump of chewing gum on
the windscreen, the gyro gunsight is
in almost universal use. But while
Britain may have invented the gyro
sight, Sweden's Saab-Scania has shown
that in this case the wheel could
usefully be reinvented, designing a
sight small enough to be installed in
Light rays from the reticle housed at the
front of the sight head are reflected from an
overhead mirror down through the combining
glass and on to the spherical mirror. Slight
movements of the mirror alter the apparent
position of the reticle when seen in the com-
bining glass
the tightest cockpit and without sur-
gery to the instrument panel. Thus
the system could to be fitted to almost
any type of combat aircraft, particu-
larly during modification or retrofit
programmes. On these simple pre-
mises is based an entire family of
sights.
Saab-Scania kept the trainer re-
quirement firmly in mind during de-
velopment, making provision for the
addition of a second sighting head so
that trainee and instructor could have
fully synchronised aiming information.
Four sub-units form the basic RGS2
installation: a sight head containing
a minimum of moving parts and elec-
tronics, a computer, and the gyro and
control units. A second sight head
All-up weight of the three units which make ub a
identical to and fully interchangeable
with the first can be fitted in the
second cockpit of two-seat aircraft.
A servo-controlled spherical mirror
in the sight head projects the image
of a sighting reticle on to a combining
glass. In the air-to-air gun and air-to-
ground rocket modes an aiming mark
derived from the reticle is positioned
by the computer and gyro unit accord-
ing to the measured angular rates of
the aircraft. In air-to-air gun mode,
gravity drop, which depends on
weapon characteristics, and roll angle
are automatically taken into account.
Sightline deflection is automatically
held to a pre-set value in the air-to-
air missile or snapshot and air-to-
ground gun modes, while for air-to-
ground rocket and bomb attacks the
sightline depression is preset by the
pilot with his cockpit-mounted control
unit. If rockets are being used for
air-to-ground attacks the sightline is
adjusted to compensate for wind drift
or target motion.
The pilot compares the size of tar-
get with one of four fixed reticle
patterns to obtain range information
for air-to-air gun attacks. The pat-
terns correspond to the apparent size
of a 35ft-wingspan aircraft at four
fixed ranges (4,000ft, 1,800ft, 1,250ft
and 700ft, for example). The cus-
tomer can select the ranges to match
his requirements.
A selector switch on the throttle
handle allows the pilot to switch from
one of these settings to another in
air-to-air combat or to revert to snap-
shot mode. In this case the aiming
mark is not adjusted or deflected in
any way but is used as a simple sight,
allowing the pilot to get off a quick
burst at any suddenly appearing
target.
The optical path within the sight
head is quite elaborate, light from
the reticle being intercepted by a
plane mirror positioned above the
combining glass, redirected down
through the combining glass and on
to the gimballed spherical mirror. It
then passes back up on to the com-
fLIGHT International, 12 August I9TS
basic RCS2 sighting system is 221b
bining glass, where it is superimposed
on the external view. Aircraft cano-
pies are normally curved in azimuth
but not in elevation, and can thus act
as a negative lens, bringing the pilot's
image of the external world to an
apparent distance of around 40yd.
To allow for this effect, the RGS2
head positions the virtual image of
the reticle at a similar distance. If
the sight head is run on the bench,
it soon becomes obvious that the
aiming mark is not at infinity but
at a certain distance ahead of the
observer. The useful area of the com-
bining glass is about 4in square. The
pilot can thus look through the head
with both eyes, and no part of the
aiming mark is blanked out by small
sideways movements of the head.
Movements of the spherical mirror
around two perpendicular axes pro-
duce sightline deflections. Two pairs
of direct - driven torque motors
mounted below the mirror operate
independently in response to de-
mands from the computer and gyro
unit. Mirror position is measured by
two angular transducers, each con-
sisting of two sensing coils and a com-
mon feeding coil on a cross-shaped
iron core. A plate on the centre of the
mirror counterweight distributes the
induced magnetic field t o each sensing
coil in proportion to the mirror's angu-
lar deflection. Since the voltage in-
duced in each coil gives a direct indi-
cation of mirror position, it is sent
back to the computer and compared
with the commanded position. The
error signal thus obtained is converted
into a demand to the torque motors.
Most of the RGS2's complex com-
ponents are contained in the com-
puter and gyro unit. DC input power
is converted to a suitable voltage for
the electronics circuitry which handles
weapon-aiming calculations and the
positioning of the sight head mirror.
Three Northrop GR-G5 miniature
rate gyros (manufactured under
licence by Saab-Scania) measure the
pitch, yaw and roll rates of the air-
craft. A signal converter transforms