Good morning a few hours too early

[Peter Szabo]

I thought there was some merit in General Beanie's comment, so I followed the links to find out whether there is a better setting. Below is what I found.

For Stalingrad, cca 48 degrees North, cca 45 degrees East, Greenwich + 3 hours the calculator gives:

19 November 1942:

Begin civil twilight 06:37
Sunrise 07:11
Sunset 16:19
End civil twilight 16:53

12 December 1942:

Begin civil twilight 07:04
Sunrise 07:40
Sunset 16:07
End civil twilight 16:43

For November, you have roughly 9 hours of daylight, 14 hours of night and about half hour for each of dawn and dusk twilight. In December there is about 8 hours of day, 15 hours of night and again, half hour of dawn and dusk each.

Reasonable enough -- the next step is how you fit 2-hour and 4-hour turns to these data. After some tinkering I believe (corrections and improvements welcome) that the best compromise is to go with 4 x 2-hour day, 3 x 4-hour night and 2 x 2-hour twilight turns -- with the "twilight" turns representing not actual twilight time but a mix of night, day and twilight. This gives

dawn turn beginning at 06:00
day turns beginning at 08:00, 10:00, 12:00, 14:00
dusk turn beginning at 16:00
night turns beginning at 18:00, 22:00, 02:00

that is, if you use local time (in PDT terms, if I am correct, this is the 6 16 1 setting). If you choose to go with Berlin time, you have the dawn turn starting at 04:00 and so on.

I do not yet have PzC: Stalingrad '42 -- but I hope it is to arrive very soon.

Peter