Mil vs Moa?

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DaBinChe

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Jun 10, 2015
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Kalifornia, United States
In the past I used open sights then tried 4x scope and red dots, because of what I was shooting....22LR then away from that cause of hoarders to Mrod. Now as I moved up to a Mutant Short it is much more precise so I'm moving up in scope as well. I don't see myself getting anything else in the near future...well maybe a mutant in .25 if that ever comes out.

Checking out the different reticles I really like the mil dot seems so much simpler and easier with elevation/windage to just move over a few dots....guess that could be said about MOA "dot" as well. Now I have read into the MIL vs MOA and am still kinda trying to wrap my head around it. What got me really off is some scopes have MIL dots but use MOA turrets or vice versa, what is up with that?!

As an air gunner shooting small targets within 100yrds/meters, mostly 50meters/yards or less it seems like MOA is better cause of the smaller unit per click. Also seem like some MIL dot reticles are really large and cover up small targets.

What are your thoughts, opinions and advice?
 
Here is an explanation of the math I used.

https://looserounds.com/2015/01/19/moa-and-mils-summed-up-nicely/Quoting from the Nemo manual:
Mils and MOA differ from an inch because they are angular, not linear, measurements. An inch equals an inch no matter how far away it is.What is MOA? MOA stands for minute of angle. There are 360 degrees in a circle and each degree is divided into 60 minutes. If we round to the nearest 1⁄100 of an inch, at 100 yards 1 degree measures 62.83 inches. One MOA, 1⁄60 of that, measures 1.047 inches. While 1 MOA at 100 yards equals 1.047 inches, at 200 yards it equals 2.094 inches (2 x 1.047). To calculate MOA at any distance, multiply 1.047 by the distance in yards and divide by 100.What is a MIL? MILS (milliradians) is another angular measurement. There are 6.2832 (π x 2) radians per circle. There are 1,000 mils per radian so, there are 6,283.2 mils in a circle. There are 21,600 MOA in a circle, so a little quick division determines there are 3.4377 MOA per mil. At 100 yards, 3.4377 MOA equals 3.599 inches (3.4377 x 1.047). Rounded up, one mil equals 3.6 inches at 100 yards. A mil is so large, it’s broken into tenths in order to make precise adjustments. If you have a riflescope with mil adjustments, each click equals 1⁄10 mil. A tenth of a mil equals .36 inch or .9144 centimeter at 100 yards. Since 1⁄10 of a mil is an angular measurement, it will be slightly larger at 100 meters than at 100 yards because 100 meters equals 109.361 yards. At 100 meters, 1⁄10 of a mil equals .9999 centimeter. Practically speaking, 1⁄10 of a mil equals 1 centimeter at 100 meters. Because mil, like MOA, is an angular measure, the length it represents increases with distance. For example, 1 mil at 100 yards equals 3.6 inches and 7.2 inches at 200 yards. To calculate how many inches are in a mil at any distance, multiply 3.6 times the distance in yards and divide by 100.
Click to expand...
 
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"DaBinChe"
Checking out the different reticles I really like the mil dot seems so much simpler and easier with elevation/windage to just move over a few dots....guess that could be said about MOA "dot" as well. Now I have read into the MIL vs MOA and am still kinda trying to wrap my head around it. What got me really off is some scopes have MIL dots but use MOA turrets or vice versa, what is up with that?!

What are your thoughts, opinions and advice?



Click to expand...
Turrets come primarily in three click graduations. One quarter minute per click, one quarter inch per click, and one tenth mil per click. Rarely you will also see a half inch per click.

One quarter inch per click is obvious. At 100 yards one click is a quarter inch. What is not obvious is that at a thousand yards 2.5 inches is not directly translatable to MILS or MOA. It is very handy to be able to convert clicks to MOA or MILS at range without having to do math. This graduation is common on all low end scopes.

One quarter minute per click is 1.04/4 = .26 inch per click (at 100 yards) at a thousand yards it is still a quarter minute. Since most exterior ballistics computations are done in MILS and MOA this is useful.

One tenth mil is approximately .358" at 100 yards. This would seem not to be as precise as MOA but it is much easier to do all your exterior ballistics calculations in MILS and therefore this graduation is usually preferred by professional and military precision riflemen. No conversions are necessary to dial in your scope once your calculations have been done. This graduation is pretty much only seen on high end, very high quality optics.

From a practical perspective as applied to air arms under a hundred yards. The actual graduation of your optic doesn't make an enormous difference as long as you understand how to make the adjustments you need to make. Some shooters spend a lot of time doing all the calculations and dialing in their scope before taking the shot but the vast majority use hold off to accomplish that in the air gunning world. Since your calculations will probably done in Chair Gun Pro or similar software, your output will be in whatever units (graduations) you prefer to include MILS. Therefore I recommend a mil dot scope.

Your mileage may vary.
^^^^ right 3.4377 MOA per MIL ^^^^
 
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Interesting =) that web calculator is wrong. :) Hmm, I couldn't stand it. I had to figure out what the web programmer got wrong. He computed the value (probably correctly) then converted it to a fraction and then converted the fraction back to a floating point number and displayed that. He also failed to round correctly when he computed the eighths of an inch. 3.47 rounds up to 3 and a half not down to 3 and three eights.

So if you set the precision to 5 decimal places instead of two, you will see that he calculates 3 and 3/8 inches and then reports 3.37500" for the value of 1 MIL. Someone should let him know.
 
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One thing to keep in mind, when you are using mils, the horizontal displacement is not a straight line but part of a curve. However, when dealing with such small angles the difference is small enough not to matter in a practical sense.

The correct way to think about the conversion between mills and MOA is to work with the full circle. There are 2 pi radians in a circle or 2000 pi milliradians or 6283.18 milliradians, while there are 360 degrees x 60 minutes / degree = 21600 minutes in that same circle.

Take 21600 minutes per circle / 6283.1853 milliradians per circle you get 3.438 minutes per mil.

The discrepancies come from taking the short chord in calculations rather than the longer arc. 
 
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JUst Google Robert Simeone milliradian, and it gives the derivation of the angular math involved relative to scope reticles. What is not ever discussed is the most important concept involved and that is that the angle is irrelevant compared to the subtension equations. Meaning that any angle (subtension) can be used, from milliradian to Ballistic Plex to archery sight pins once 4 of the 5 variables in the most basic form of the equation are known.

...and Mike if you really want to understand angular scope reticle applications you really can't avoid the math. You really don't have to completely understand it in order to apply it, since most ballistics programs and lasers do most of the work for you, but they can't do it all
 
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