MOA with Milradian reticle??

N

ndking1126

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For those of you with more long distance shooting and high end scopes experience then me, do you find there are any issues with using a MOA elevation and windage adjustments, but then having the mildots on your reticule in milradians?

Its my understanding that the main purpose of milradians is for judging distance (as long as you know the size of your target), but it would seem to me if the knobs and reticule used the same measurement, you could save time by not having to adjust the elevation knob every single shot. (For example, you are zerod at 300 yards and at 400 yards, you only have to adjust 2 milradians, so you hold over 2 dots.)

Vortex PST's reticules (one being moa, one being mils but otherwise the same) got me thinking about this.

Am I just over thinking this?
 
For the reason you mentioned, I bought the mil/mil Vortex PST 4-16x50 optic. While one can use the mildots for ranging, it also works nicely for dialing in a correction when your POI did not make POA. Assuming you can see the bullet hole or the splash, it is handy to use the mil-dot recticle for a "come up .5 mils" adjustment and then just dial 5 clicks up on the elevation turret. Beats having to convert it into MOA.
 
Seems like you understand what you have quite well.
You likely know that unless it is a first focal plane reticle,the 1 mil dot spacing is only true at full power.

One way to cope is to develop a "bilingual" way of thinking about it.

If you are going to Kentucky using the mildots,know your trajectory in mils,and think in mils.When twisting knobs,think in MOA.

So,the only challenge is to learn your rifle's trajectory in Mils.

If you want an easy way to pictue the conversion,mil=1000

Its a ratio,The mil spacing is 1/1000 th the range,in the same unit.

MOA is one 3600th .So,the conversion factor is 3.6 MOA per mil.

With some cartridges,at max power only,a 300 yd zero will be real close to 1 mildot high at 100 yds and 1 mildot low around 400 yds.That will vary with cartridge,of course.At 200,or thereabouts,you will have a max midrange,and it will likely be 5-6 in or so.I'm not using a chart.Using the 1 mildot above the crosshair is still pretty close .You would be a bit low.

My estimates don't really matter,I'm just illustrating,if you want to use your mildot for hold off,think in mildots,not inches or MOA

If a machinist running an inch machine gets a metric print,he does not think about .03937 as he turns the handles.He converts all the dims on the drawing from metric to inch.(I know,today the computer does it.,or you switch in/metric on the DRO I'm talking about when we cranked handles and read paper prints,maybe had Travel-dials)
 
Ranging in Mils on targets of known size is easy if you want the range in meters and you know the size of the target in meters. If you know the range in meters and want to know the size of the target in meters it will be easy.

The problem of using MOA while adjusting onto a target with a mildot reticle is going to be a matter of using conversions for those variables. It is complicated to do on the fly if you are using two different measurement systems.

You can make a range chart for determining size or distance to a target with those factors precalculated to ease that process.

1 MOA subtends an arc of 1.047 inches at 100 yards or 1.145 inches at 100meters.

1 Mil subtends an arc of 0.1 meters at 100 meters.

1 Mil equals 3.375 MOA

1 MOA equals 0.296296 mils... into infinity.

1 MOA is equal to 1/21,600th of a circle.

1 Mil is equal to 1/6400 of a cirlcle in military terms. In trigonometric it is 1/6283th of a circle.

An easy rule of thumb that the military uses is that a man facing you squarely will be approximately 1 mil wide at 500 meters or 5 mils wide at 100 meters. This is assuming the man's shoulders are 1/2 meter wide, which is not quite 20 inches.

If you want to use yards a reticule graduated in MOA will be far easier on the fly. Machines that can calculate that for you and allow you to have a chart to put in your kit will be a good option. So much easier to do today than know the math behind it.
 
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To answer your question succinctly ... No.

I don't find it to be problematic. Also, for long range shooting, I don't use Kentucky windage much. I tend to dial in all my corrections. It is true that it would be slightly easier to dial in a correction from a miss if it were in the same units as the scope, but due to the recoil of my long range rounds, I rarely (as in never) see my own impacts ... so my spotter is the one that makes the call ... therefore it is irrelevant what units MY reticule has, it is the spotter's scope that could make it easier. FWIW, the one place that I would use the holdover approach is for leading a target, that is why my range cards have the wind and elevation corrections in MOA and the lead corrections in mils.

Saands
 
Slugthrower,I think it works out that a mil will be one inch at 1000 inches,or 1 ft at 1000 ft,or one yard at 1000 yds.,or 1 meter at 1000 meters.
 
I don't think it really matters much, unless you want your hold over and clicks the same. People have lived with the different systems together by range finding with the reticle and the adjusting the scope with the turrets.

The advantage with using mils comes if you are familiar with the metric system: instead of 1 mil being 3.6" at 100yrds, its 10cm at 100m, which is a far nicer measurement to use.
It also means if you calculate you target hight in mm and divide by the number of mils you get the range but in meters.

Now I know some people are going to say that metric is to hard to learn, but I grew up with metric and had to learn the imperial system to understand all this gun and shooting stuff.
And how a system that uses multiple of 10 is hard to learn I will never know:confused:
 
Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

After reading your responses, I did a little more research and came up dummy numbers for practical excersizes ("Lets say my target 16" and is 3 MOA based on my retiucle. How far away is it?") and it seems like it would generally keep things more simple if the adjustments and reticule use the same measurements. However I certainly could see how it wouldn't be a problem if they were different.

Unlike a Monarch that is moa/mil, the PST uses moa/moa or mil/mil, so I got to thinking, which one would I want?

Since I work in the Army, I'm pretty used to metric. But I'm thinking I'll get the MOA reticule because if my math is correct, the MOA offers a finer adjustment.. tell me if I'm missing something:

MOA --> 1.047 *.25= .26175" moved per click when aiming at 100 yards.
MIL --> 1mil=3.438MOA, so 3.438*1.047 means 1mil=3.5995" at 100 yards. 1/10 adjustment per click at 100 yards = .35995" moved per click when aiming at 100 yards.

ARE there any problems with my math?

I'm more used to using MOA, so if my math is correct, I'm definitely leaning towards going with the MOA based reticule.
 
"Slugthrower,I think it works out that a mil will be one inch at 1000 inches,or 1 ft at 1000 ft,or one yard at 1000 yds.,or 1 meter at 1000 meters." HiBC

The trig version is a 1000 to 1 version. The military version is different.

See the above numbers to calculate those numbers. To get that 1 inch of arc at 1000 inches you need 6283 graduations to make a complete circle. the military likes it to be nice and square so to speak. The use 6400 graduations in a circle. This makes the military mil a little smaller than the the trigonometric milliradian.

The mil is 3.375 MOA in military measure. In trig it will be 3.43785...MOA

Those will be 3.533625 inches/mil or 3.599427 inches/mrad respectively.

For the purposes of rifles it will be fine either way. For artillery that is dealing in 10,000 plus meters of range the little differences add up.
 
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Slugthrower,agreed!!I understood the variations.
I was thinking in terms of range estimation or kentucky windage using a reticle'
 
Get a Horus Vision reticle, zero in once, and you won't have to dial in any corrections. As long as your load is consistent, all your corrections are done using the reticle without the need to turn any knobs. Only caveat is you need to be able to see your bullet impacts if you don't have someone calling shots for you. Depending on your load etc this type of reticle might not be as good as a plain mil dot system.
http://www.horusvision.com/system.php
 
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I'll probably get flamed for this, but I never have seen the need for mil-dot ranging capability. Maybe twenty years ago....but this is the twenty-first century...I'll leave that to the cavemen and use a laser rangefinder which is far more precise, anyway...

So, I could care less whether I've got a mil-dot reticle, but I do want minute of angle turrets.
 
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