The point of the stage was to intentionally cause a miss, and test the shooter's ability to recover from the miss quickly. In real life situations, your targets can vary in size, and you may only have a small amount of time to take a shot or two before the target disappears. If you're method of engaging the target and following up on a miss requires you to know the target size and its distance, your chance of making a hit on it are going to be low when you don't have this information or time to calculate it. In situations like that, you take your best guess at the range, take your initial shot, then adjust accordingly. Having a reticle in your scope or your spotter's spotting scope that can give you an instant correction makes things a whole lot easier. This is also why we run brakes; they allow us to see our own trace if we don't have a spotter or one that is experienced.
Why chose .1 milliradian scope over 1/4 MOA
- Thread starter aheppner
- Start date
The point of the stage was to intentionally cause a miss, and test the shooter's ability to recover from the miss quickly. In real life situations, your targets can vary in size, and you may only have a small amount of time to take a shot or two before the target disappears. If you're method of engaging the target and following up on a miss requires you to know the target size and its distance, your chance of making a hit on it are going to be low when you don't have this information or time to calculate it. In situations like that, you take your best guess at the range, take your initial shot, then adjust accordingly. Having a reticle in your scope or your spotter's spotting scope that can give you an instant correction makes things a whole lot easier. This is also why we run brakes; they allow us to see our own trace if we don't have a spotter or one that is experienced.
Gunnerlove
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Vancouver Island
Sometimes it is a best guess, and send it.
It's really no different than what you do when you walk up to the firing line in F-Class and take your first shot. You take your best guess at the conditions, see where it goes and adjust from there. Same principal, only our reticle tells us what to correct without having to know the distance or target size, and without the need to do any math.
So , 2 things , its
1 ) Its courseness of adjustment is good , as its not too fine , ie 1/4 moa , and its not too course ie 1/2 moa , its in between these 2 adjustment ranges .
so its a good compromise between , too fine & too course as a unit of adjsutment .
2 ) Most 0.1 mrad adjsutable scopes , have a very good turrets , ie alot of clicks & minimum amount of turns ( and in most cases the turns are fully indicated , with yellow indictors ( S&B ) or click out buttons etc , Kahles etc .
Cheers CHris
1 ) Its courseness of adjustment is good , as its not too fine , ie 1/4 moa , and its not too course ie 1/2 moa , its in between these 2 adjustment ranges .
so its a good compromise between , too fine & too course as a unit of adjsutment .
2 ) Most 0.1 mrad adjsutable scopes , have a very good turrets , ie alot of clicks & minimum amount of turns ( and in most cases the turns are fully indicated , with yellow indictors ( S&B ) or click out buttons etc , Kahles etc .
Cheers CHris
Here is an experiment that might be interesting.
Set up a target of known size - say a Fig. 11 - at a known longer range - say 700m.
Use the reticle to calculate the range. See how close the calculated range is to the actual known distance. The calculated distance must be very close to the actual, for the ranging system to be useful. At that distance, a 10% error will result in a bad shot. Longer ranges are even less forgiving to errors.
Set up a target of known size - say a Fig. 11 - at a known longer range - say 700m.
Use the reticle to calculate the range. See how close the calculated range is to the actual known distance. The calculated distance must be very close to the actual, for the ranging system to be useful. At that distance, a 10% error will result in a bad shot. Longer ranges are even less forgiving to errors.
it seems I got more than I bargained for when I started this thread lol
good read tho.
my question has been answered and the answer is .......NO.
other than ranging targets with the reticle there is no benefit to working in radians other than personal preference.
one thing is still clear, some people don't understand what milliradians are and I know a lot of people don't understand what MOA means either.
If there is one thing I took away from taking a surveying course is the understanding of angular measurement.
thanks for all the info and opinions on gear. much appreciated
good read tho.
my question has been answered and the answer is .......NO.
other than ranging targets with the reticle there is no benefit to working in radians other than personal preference.
one thing is still clear, some people don't understand what milliradians are and I know a lot of people don't understand what MOA means either.
If there is one thing I took away from taking a surveying course is the understanding of angular measurement.
thanks for all the info and opinions on gear. much appreciated
Last edited:
We do this constantly as snipers. We even have exercises called DD's (determining distance). And yes you can get within 1-4% if you are steady and actually know your reticle. Figure 11's are easy. Try different helmets or enemy rifles and vehicles! That's where it starts to turn into best guess.
Its silly to assume that everyone buys their equipment with the intent of only using it on a known distance range. I wouldn't.
Have you ever heard of the "Precision Rifle Series"? Its basically an aggregate of the 15 largest practical long range shooting matches in the US for a given year. All of these matches are at unknown distance, have no sighters, no wind flags, and are shot under time pressure out to distances often beyond 1000 yards. Many have moving targets, some have stages where you fire from moving vehicle, even a helicopter. Very difficult matches, definitely not for beginners. The shooters at the top are probably among the best 1% of practical shooters in the US.
They did a survey of equipment last year, and this is what they found:
The author of the article I pulled this chart from was also trying to tell the reader that there wasn't any difference. But, he was also using overly complicated formulas to try and show that ranging in yards is difficult with an MRAD scope I think that in and of itself is pretty telling...
Lets think about this for a minute. These are American shooters. Shooters in a country that hates all things metric, where the majority of the ranges and targets are in imperial units. These kinds of matches were using MOA optics pretty much exclusively up until about a decade ago. Some have military sniper/DM experience, but the vast majority do not. Of those that do, the older ones were probably using MOA scopes. So, most of these guys have learned on MOA scopes. Why would they change from something they're familiar with if there is no need to? If there really is no difference, then it makes no sense whatsoever that the vast majority of these competitors have migrated to MRAD optics. I highly doubt its exclusively due to easier ranging as you say. You can range with both MRAD and MOA reticles, and any savvy shooter will have a little laminated ranging table attached to their stock or scope they use as a look-up instead of doing math under pressure.
I also doubt that it has anything to do with them wanting to be "tacticool". The prize tables at these matches are insane; if you're in the top 3-5, you're probably getting a custom rifle as a prize. If you're first, the rifle will likely have a $2-3k optic on top of it. That's plenty of motivation to run the most efficient equipment. Most competitors are running MRAD and the few MOA shooters there are rarely placing high. Sorry, but all that is a bit too much to chalk up to just being a preference.
I'll agree that there isn't any difference when you're shooting deliberate stages with no time pressure. But, there is when you try to speed things up. Human brains can process the smaller single digit numbers and divide them into tenths faster, both mathematically and visually on the reticle (reading a value or finding one for a holdover/wind hold-off).
^^yup^^ I went around at CISC this year and checked out every optic that every team was using. 2 or something like that were using MOA. Everyone else was MRAD. It was Calgary SWAT and another police team that were using them. Under pressure nothing compares to FFP with MRAD turrets and Reticles. Period. End of discussion.
arcticcathonda
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Southern Alberta
