Thread: Mil-Dot reticle help pls clever fellas

Originally Posted by Flyblown

That’s a typo I assume @Woody. A mil is 10cm at 100m.

Yep.Mil is 10cm @100m. Less at 100 yards.

Originally Posted by Ftx325

Okay... call me stupid but why have an mrad scope then convert it to moa ? Isn't the whole point of mrad to do away with moa... I thought mrad was supposed to be easier to use. Sure as hell don't look like it if you need to recalculate everything across from moa. And shouldn't the scope manual tell you which magnification is correct for 1mil at 100 mtr. Call me old school but I will stick to moa thanks....ok , rant over

It’s normal to have a mildot reticle with MOA adjustments on the turret. It comes from the original USMC sniper rifles with Unertl fixed 10x scopes.

In this instance it doesn’t bother me in the slightest what the units the turret is in, because it is not a ballistic turret and generally I will not be dialling up with it. I want the mildot reticle because it aligns perfectly with my .308 ballistics at a 200 meter zero for simple holdover reference points. The dots correspond to 300m, 400m, 475m, 550m. I won’t be using the reticle for ranging purposes because I’ve got a rangefinder for that. So no calculators involved!

If I was to take the cap off the turret and dial up for a particular shot, which might happen from time to time, then to get past the units problem I have learnt to work in “clicks”.

This particular reticle has an illuminated centre dot which works extremely well from what I saw this week thanks to one of our helpful forum members, @johnd. Thanks again mate. The only outstanding question was the calibration magnification and I am expecting that to be 10x, thanks for the confirmation of this fellas. Once the scope is here and set up then I will do the paper on the post exercise, and determine precisely where on the magnification ring the centre dot to centre dot distance corresponds to 10cm at 100m.

I had a clear Ridge mil dot 2nd focal plane, the 10x on the zoom ring was red which was
clever idea and a bit of a give away for the correct magnification.

Greetings All,
Probably a good time to remind everyone that a mil and a milliradian (mrad) are two different units. Our American cousins routinely get the two scrambled. A mrad works out to 10 cm at 100 metres exactly and a mil is 9.8cm. Smaller than the difference between 1MoA and 1 inch at 100 yards yes but different just the same.
Regards Grandpamac.

Just to confuse..

Definitions of the angular mil

There are 2000π milliradians (≈ 6283.185 mrad) in a circle; thus a milliradian is just under 1⁄6283 of a circle, or ≈ 3.438 minutes of arc. Each of the definitions of the angular mil are similar to that value but are easier to divide into many parts.

1⁄6400 of a circle in NATO countries.
1⁄6283 The “real” trigonometric unit of angular measurement of a circle in use by telescopic sight manufacturers using (stadiametric) rangefinding in reticles.
1⁄6000 of a circle in the former Soviet Union and Finland (Finland phasing out the standard in favour of the NATO standard).
1⁄6300 of a circle in Sweden. The Swedish term for this is streck, literally "line". Sweden (and Finland) have not been part of NATO nor the Warsaw Pact. Note however that Sweden has changed its map grid systems and angular measurement to those used by NATO, so the "streck" measurement is obsolete.

Thanks Zimmer,
I believe that the US armed forces used two different versions at the same time between the wars.
Regards Grandpamac.

I realise just how thick I was being yesterday, not just with the primary level maths but also how to use Strelok to solve this problem easily. I blame it on the meds... and the kids... and the dogs... Using the values provided by the scope manufacturer I can clearly see how a 10 times calibration produces the 15x and 2.5x MOA values.

I’ve also been able to work out that this reticle is based on the US Army version of the mildot, not the US Marine Corps. Doesn’t make any practical difference to the holds in the field though.