Moa or Mirad

**Bravo Whiskey** · July 12th, 2010, 12:16 PM

Originally Posted by arrrrgh15

The reticle of my spotting scope is a MIL reticle. So he gives corrections in mils. There's nothing stupid about that at all. I'd be more pissed off if he gave corrections back in inches. But instead I just have to rush through a mil to moa conversion in my head and hope for the best.

Stupid is having a Mil spotting scope and a mil reticle rifle scope with a completely different calibration for windage and elevation (moa).

If he's speaking mandarin, and I have a mil/mil scope, then I'm speaking mandarin too and don't need a phrase book. Reticle and adjusments are completely compatible.

And so, everybody is making a switch to Mil/Mil for that very reason. Most of the folks I shoot with are shooting Mil/Mil scopes. And hopefully my new scope will be here end of this month or next month. And it will have a Gen2 mil reticle and 1/10th mil adjustments. That way we're all speaking mandarin instead of them speaking mandarin and I'm speaking pa dutch.

Mil reticle/Moa adjustments is a thing of the past. The Marines dropped it for mil/mil, the Army will be doing the same in the near future with the M24 replacement.

Reticle, windage, and elevation should be using the SAME unit of measure.

I will only have one format on a scope. I guess what I am asking is if I am shooting @ targets and I am using a spottingscope/binos that are not range finding and I see a hit that is about lets say, 1 1/2" low and left, is it easy enough to get yourself to think of the mils as opposed to the inches. For example using 100 yards for distance "that was about 2mils low & left"
Sorry if I am beating a dead horse and thanks for the posts.

**arrrrgh15** · July 12th, 2010, 05:25 PM

Originally Posted by Bravo Whiskey

I will only have one format on a scope. I guess what I am asking is if I am shooting @ targets and I am using a spottingscope/binos that are not range finding and I see a hit that is about lets say, 1 1/2" low and left, is it easy enough to get yourself to think of the mils as opposed to the inches. For example using 100 yards for distance "that was about 2mils low & left"
Sorry if I am beating a dead horse and thanks for the posts.

Well, if your off 2 mils at 100 yards you've got issues.

But lets say you aim at a target and fire a shot. With a mil/mil scope you can look through the scope and visually measure how many mils of windage and elevation that it is off and dial that exact same amount into your scope.

So if I fire a shot and after looking through the scope I see the shot was .3 mils low and .6 mils left, I can dial up .3 mils and .6 mils right and I'm done. No math, no conversions.

With MOA if I estimate i'm 8 inches off at 600 yards what's the scope adjustment? You have to stop to do the math. 8/6=1.3moa

What if they call the shot in mils. 0.5 mils off. lets see, 0.5*3.5=1.75moa

If I have mil adjustments I just dial the .5 mils and I'm done.

It's simpler.

**Tomcat088** · July 12th, 2010, 07:33 PM

Ok, I guess I'll get in on this thread and hopefully help clarify for some people that are confused or not quite following each other. There's been some really good and correct information offered in this thread, and I can tell some from where people are confused or making a few assumptions that are incorrect. I know ReconLDR, Aaaargh15 and some others have read the mil-dot thread and understand it, but for those that haven't, PLEASE take the time to read and understand this thread in the optics stickies. http://forum.pafoa.org/optics-46/412...want-know.html . It'll help put everybody on the same page, and it also explains MOA AND MIL's, and their differences. Pretty much both are a self contained system, and as long as the turrets match the reticle, they're pretty much the equivalent, but different. We'll get into calling corrections and the spotter later, but for right now I want to state that with matching reticle and turrets, they're basically equivalent.

The major problem that I'm seeing some people make is that MOA=Inches and yards, and that MIL=cm and meters. This is INCORRECT, and I wanted to clarify on that a little bit for the people that don't understand. MOA and MIL's are BOTH angular measurements, although they are on a different scale. MIL's do NOT equal meters, just like MOA does not equal yards or inches; the second you stop thinking that they do, the faster you'll understand what is going to follow. It just so happens that at 100 yards, 1 MOA is very close to 1", but not exactly. 1 MOA actually equals 1.0475" at 100 yards, so people round it off to make it easier to remember. Even when shooting longer ranges, it's not too big of a deal because the wind call or standard deviation on your load is usually missed by more than what the rounding of the calibration of your turret does. Either way, 1 MOA does NOT always equal 1" all the time, it only almost does at 100 yards.

It gets confusing to many people when you tell them that at 200 yards, 1 MOA is 2", and each click on their 1/4 MOA scope moves the crosshairs 1/2". When you start telling them that at 300 yards, 1 MOA equals 3" and 1 click moves the crosshairs ~.33", most get really confused. When you start trying to give odd yardages and deal with the fractions (which most people are bad at anyway), they get VERY confused. Like 1 moa at 228 yards is actually 2.39", and each click on their scope moves the impact ~.60" (.597"). Do you see where this is going with the different oddball distances and fractions? Lots of people, especially tactical rifle shooters don't shoot at only 100, 200, 300 yards, etc. Also, even if you're using MOA, it just doesn't make a lot of sense to try to convert it all to inches; even if that's how most people think.

Let me give you an exampe of what happens. Let's say someone is shooting at a close range like 372 yards, and you shoot and miss. The spotter calls out that you missed the target by about 8". Ok, so you know you missed by 8", but it doesn't mean that you need to put on 32 clicks on your scope to move the bullet 4", because you have 1/4 MOA clicks, NOT 1/4" clicks. Most people only shoot at 100 yards and then don't touch their dials, but those are 1/4 MOA clicks, even if they're labeled 1/4" clicks. So that brings us to the question, well how many MOA do I have to get to put on the scope to go 8"? Now begins the math. So 1 MOA at 372 yards is about 3.72", we won't use exact values because most people will use the rounded method anyway. Ok, so now you have to divide 8 by 3.72, to figure how many minutes to put on the scope. So you need roughly 2.15 MOA to put you on target. So you dial 8 clicks on your scope and hold over just a little of the side you didn't dial for that .15 click; or you dial 9 clicks on your scope and hold a little bit towards the direction that you dialed from, because you dialed a little extra (2.25 instead of 2.15). People like to think that it's a simple as shooting round numbers like 400 yards, where 1 MOA is 4". Then if you missed by 8", it would be easy to dial on 8 clicks (2 MOA) and be right on target.

In the real world though, especially in tactical shooting, you don't always get to shoot at known yardages, and you don't usually miss at a nice round number where it's easy to figure out. Most of the time if you're going to dial the exact number in inches, it's gonna take some math, and it's gonna be a bit slow. If you don't do the math, then you're just taking a guess and shooting another round, and that kind of defeats the purpose of having the reticle that you do. There's no reason to guess or just lob rounds out there, when you have the means right at your fingertip to makes perfect hits without guessing. NOW, if the spotter was able to read the wind in MOA or call the correction in MOA, and you had MOA turrets and reticle, it would be quite fast to dial 2 MOA on the scope, or hold 2 with your reticle and send it. Then it's not a guess, you know exactly how many you needed and make your hit. The problem is this though, since the measurement of MOA is constantly changing, most spotters can't do the math in their head all that fast to just give you a number like 2 MOA, or 2.15 MOA. There ARE MOA reticles or IPHY reticles in spotting scopes, but the only ones that I know of right off the top of my head are USO spotting scopes. You're talking about $1,000 or more for the spotting scope.

Mil's are not metric, and would work the same way as the MOA scenario. You know your dope to your target, and you shoot. Let's say that you have a miss, and the spotter calls the correction. Obviously, I hope that it's not in inches, because you'll run into the same problem that you do with MOA, you'll have to start doing correction. Even if he called the windage in centimeters, you'd still have to do some math and dial the corrections. So what happens if the spotter calls the correction in Mil's? Well piece of cake, you dial the correction into the scope, or hold for it, and BOOM make your hit. The nice thing about this though, is that there are a LOT of mil reticles in rifle scopes and spotting scopes that are $450 or less. The other nice thing is that TONS of people own mil-dot scopes, as opposed to not that many have MOA reticles in their rifle scopes.

There's quite a few problems with calling wind corrections or misses in inches. The first thing being, right in front of someone, if you ask them to put out their hands and show you how much 7" is, and then 9". Most of the time, if you got out a ruler and compare, they're going to have missed by at least an inch or more. That's RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU, when you start talking about doing it accurately at 100 or more yards; LOL, people aren't as close as they like to think they are. If you don't believe me, have someone spot through a mil reticle and see where the hit actually was, then have them tell you how many inches. You can then do the math with the reticle and see how much you were off, when you start doing it 300 yards or more, you'll be astounded. The other thing that's the problem isn't just that people have different ideas of how much an inch is when looking through a scope, but it's that in order to tell how many inches to hold, you have to have a reference with the target. This means you either need to know how tall the target is, how wide it is, etc. it's the only real way that you can tell how much an inch or so is at that distance. Without a reticle or something, you're pretty much playing "guess how much" with how far the miss is, same goes for the person trying to hold off. When you have to hold off some place that isn't even that close to the target, or it gets to be over like 8-9", all you're doing is REALLY guessing. Guesses just don't work well for making hits on target, all you're doing is walking rounds onto target. That's what reticles are for, it gets rid of the guess work. The reticle that the spotter has tells him exactly so many MIL's (or MOA) it is, then in your scope that many MIL's (or MOA) is the SAME MEASUREMENT. WOW, look at that, the reticle is your reference; you don't have to have any frame of reference for the target or know the exact target size. All you had to do was follow what your spotter reticle said, make the adjustment on your reticle, and your making hits. There's no guess work, because the reticle made an exact measurement, and that's why you can reliably make hits this way, and VERY QUICKLY without any math.

Basically, what it comes down to is that using a MIL/MIL or MOA/MOA scope is no better than another. Both are fairly accurate systems, and accurate enough that one isn't really all that more precise over the other. If you wanted to break down the system up close for the average adjustment on scopes, .1 mil for MIL/MIL and 1/4 MOA for MOA/MOA. At that distance .1 mil is roughly .36" per click at 100 yards; 1/4 MOA is roughly .25" at 100 yards. So technically the MOA allows for you to move the reticle .11" more finely. When you translate that to 1,000 yards, it means that the 1/4 MOA reticle can adjust roughtly 1.1" more accurately. At 1,000 yards, lol, even most world class shooters can't get the conditions right for that amount to matter; so I assure you for pretty much everybody else (including me and you), it doesn't matter.

There are a few benefits in going with MIL/MIL thought. The main one is that .1 mil is a fine enough adjustment to be accurate, but you can cover a larger distance with fewer clicks than a 1/4 MOA click. This is very useful for LR guys, because it means you can just get to your dope number faster. It is also useful because it means you can put more clicks on a single turn of the turret. This means that you can get more adjustment out of a single turn and don't have to keep track of which turn your on as much. The other thing is options, there are TONS of reticles that are designed on the mil adjustment. You can find at least one, and probably several that you REALLY love, with MOA that will NOT be the case. Not too many people make MOA reticles, much less spotting scopes, so you won't have many choices. The other thing is that there are tons more lower priced spotting scopes, that are accurate and decent quality, than there are MOA. The other thing to consider is that if you end up meeting or shooting with another serious LR guy, the chances are 8.5-9/10 will be using mil/mil. So it's a much more common "language" amongst LR and tactical shooters. It is possible to use mils and covert them over to the MOA adjustment, but against, it's just more math.

Both systems are pretty much a wash, it's merely personal preference to use one system over the other. When you start to look at what is more widely available, more widely used, and cost of equipment, MIL/MIL is where most people choose to go. Hope this helps you have an idea of how they both work and cost/benefits of using one over the other. Please feel free to ask more questions, or for clarification if I was unclear on anything.

**Tomcat088** · July 12th, 2010, 07:45 PM

Originally Posted by Bravo Whiskey

I will only have one format on a scope. I guess what I am asking is if I am shooting @ targets and I am using a spottingscope/binos that are not range finding and I see a hit that is about lets say, 1 1/2" low and left, is it easy enough to get yourself to think of the mils as opposed to the inches. For example using 100 yards for distance "that was about 2mils low & left"
Sorry if I am beating a dead horse and thanks for the posts.

This is a pretty good question, and not quite beating a dead horse. To answer your question, nobody really calls out a correction of so many mils, etc, unless they're using a reticle. It's because guys that call corrections in mil's are wanting to be pretty accurate and want the next round to hit on target. It's just not accurate enough to them to guess at how many mils it was, etc if they don't have a reticle. What you also have to realize is that most guys shooting mil/mil scopes or moa/moa scopes who are utilizing them how they're made to be used, are NOT going to be shooting at only 100 yards. It's just silly to pay that much money for a scope that is made to use and shoot out to longer ranges, when you can buy a cheap tasco without any reference or reticle to shoot 100 yards. So we don't really have to "think" in mils when we see a miss; we just look at which mil-dot/hash that it hit by and call that number. The shooter will then know the correction and shoot, it's as easy as seeing it through the reticle. As I said in my other post, if you're trying to guess how many inches at ranges past even 300 yards, you're really starting to just take wild guesses, and nobody knows exactly. When you have feedback from a reticle that exactly matches the reticle, you're on the EXACT same page.

For what it's worth, just because we use mil's, doesn't mean we disregard inches. For people that shoot mil's a lot, we grew up using inches, and especially at closer ranges, it's not very difficult for me to know how much to change my point of impact. if I missed by an inch and a half at 100 yards, then I don't even need to hold quite half a mil to get the hit where I want. It's just something that we learn to go with and that really does become second nature. Either way, pretty much, you don't call corrections in mils unless you have a reticle to verify that's how many. IF there is the chance that the spotter isn't using a mil-dot scope, and the miss was close enough to the target, or in a place on the target; we'll call corrections according to the target. An example of this would be like say someone missed the bottom left side of the target by maybe an inch and a half. Well if I didn't have a reitcle, I'd call "Hold top right edge of target and send it". Now this may not result in a PERFECT bullseye hit, but it's gonna put a hit pretty dang closer or 1 1/2" from the center of the target. For tactical guys trying to make a center mass hit, and not a BR shooter, that's "close enough". We're about precision, but at the same time, there gets to be a point where you cut into your time and start splitting hairs. Tactical guys want perfect shots, but especially at longer ranges, 1 1/2" from the center works for us. Does this make any sort of sense?

**Bravo Whiskey** · July 12th, 2010, 10:46 PM

Hey Guys,
Thank you for the posts.
The rep button only works so many times so I will pay my dues @ the next chance.
You all have helped me figure out something about LR shooting.
Arrrrgh & Tomcat, the last posts helped put the apples to oranges vrs the real world practical application that I needed to help me get a feel for where I want to go.

**arrrrgh15** · July 13th, 2010, 08:03 AM

Originally Posted by Bravo Whiskey

Hey Guys,
Thank you for the posts.
The rep button only works so many times so I will pay my dues @ the next chance.
You all have helped me figure out something about LR shooting.
Arrrrgh & Tomcat, the last posts helped put the apples to oranges vrs the real world practical application that I needed to help me get a feel for where I want to go.

your welcome. To back up Tomcat, MOA/MOA scope vs Mil/Mil scope is a wash. What I am refering to is the predominance of Mil/Moa scopes. Mil reticle, but Moa adjustments. Therein lies the rub.

MOST people shooting tactical long range shoot using a Mil reticle of some sort. So from a practicality standpoint, mil wins.

Also, to back up a statement I made earlier, you are not going to be able to estimate a miss in inches at extended ranges. Its just not practical. And as tomcat pointed out, an error in the range estimation compounds an error using that method.

Good luck.

**mojo** · July 13th, 2010, 08:29 AM

Originally Posted by Bravo Whiskey

Hey Guys,
Thank you for the posts.
The rep button only works so many times so I will pay my dues @ the next chance.
You all have helped me figure out something about LR shooting.
Arrrrgh & Tomcat, the last posts helped put the apples to oranges vrs the real world practical application that I needed to help me get a feel for where I want to go.

Yep .. these guys are great at explaining this stuff. I too would give them rep points but I have to "spread the love".