Mil/MoA vs Mil/Mil vs MoA/MoA

1: Totally agree, to me it is a big mystery that most scope manufacturers still make use of metric (mil) reticles combined with imperial turrets. It's like a car with a speedometer in km/h and a odometer indicating in miles..... It just makes no sense.
Especially the cheaper scope manufacturers are so stubborn to keep it that way. They must be thinking, if the reticle looks badass or tacticool, with as many hashmarks as possible, people will buy it anyway.
Good to see that more and more scope makers are switching over to matching turrets. Sightron for instance has mil/mil or moa/moa layouts on their stuf, up to the shooter to decide which one he/she likes more.

2: The moa/moa models have a bit less coarse adjustments, 0.7cm/100m vs 1.0cm/100m, but there are exceptions. My S3 10-50x60 has got 0.05mrad adjustments, so that is 0.5cm/100m.
However, my PMII has got 0.1 mrad adjustments, and I have never run into trouble because the clicks are a bit more coarse on that scope.
0.1mrad clicks represent 0.5cm at 50m, that's totally fine with me.
I have to admit that I am a metric guy (EU = mainly metric based system), but I guess I could live with a moa/moa layout as well. As long as there is a defined amount of clicks between hashmarks ( let's say 4 clicks for 1 moa) you will get used to it IMO. Moa or mil? That's just a matter of preference

1. Costs of retooling/caging equipment setup for product runs. It is much cheaper on a manufacturer to keep equipment set to MOA turrets than to change it over for a run of MIL turrets. The majority of scopes in the world are MOA.

2. 1/4 MOA clicks are slightly smaller than 1/10 MIL clicks. This means you can get a slightly finer tuned sight in with a MOA turret.

The problem with MOA/MOA is that you'll need a pretty high calibrated magnification on SFP and FFP scopes to be able to have a usable reticle that's truly 1 MOA between dots/hashmarks. This is also something you can see in the industry, with lower magnification scopes you rarely see MOA/MOA. In higher magnification scopes (say max 24x and up) it is more common to see MOA/MOA and most of them have a calibrated magnification of 24x and up. A calibrated 1 MOA reticle will become very tiny when calibrated on lower magnifications. A more logical move would be, for example, a 4 MOA reticle with 2 MOA hashmarks in between (something like the half mildot reticles) but than you're close to mildot again so why not use that than.

Like said above I think it's mainly cost driven, mildot reticles are more common and 1/4 MOA turrets are more common so cheaper to produce probably.

A couple of weeks ago I made a calculator to be able to use your mildot reticle with MOA turrets as for example an 4 MOA dot reticle with MOA turrets. I'll translate it to English and post it here. With the calculator you can calculate for yourself which magnification corresponds with a calibrated MOA magnification and you can use your scope as an MOA/MOA scope.

Calculator
It's an Excel file so you have to download the original file to get it to work. I'm looking for an easier way to do the filesharing so maybe later there's a better link.
I've protected the sheet so it's only possible to change the numbers in the blue boxes. If someone wants I can send m the password to unprotect it but that means you have to be careful with the rest of the boxes and their formulas, otherwise the converter doesn't work anymore

I like to run my SFP, mil-dot , 1/4" click scopes at 12x magnification.

That gives me 3"/100yd dot spacing, and 12 clicks per dot. Easy.

As Weatherby already said, MOA/MOA will probably give you some more precise adjustments. I don't think it really matters which type you choose (because the difference is minor) as long as your confident using it. If you use the imperial units on a daily basis I think it's easier to use MOA, if your more into the metric system MIL is the way to go. In this way you don't have to convert units on the fly which can lead to calculation mistakes.

mil/mil or moa/moa is ideal, but mil/moa is usable too, the most important is know your reticle (and his values at your most use magnification) and turrent click values

Michael2 part question:

1. I still don't understand why some scope manufacturers insist that Mil based reticles with MoA turrets are an industry standard? It just doesn't make sense to me. Can anyone help me understand this?
...

Click to expand...

Most scopes are SFP and variable magnification. Mil turrets don't make much sense on that type of scope.

mil/mil only makes sense when correcting for a missed shot. 10 clicks per dot is a convenient relationship when making that adjustment.

For SFP scopes:
1/4" click turrets - shoot using 14.4x magnification.

1/4 MOA turrets - shoot using about 13.8x magnification.

At those magnifications, you'll get 10 clicks per dot.

IMO two of the most important optics concepts are the inversely proportional nature of subtension vs. magnification in SFP scopes, and the adaptation of the mil-ranging formula for rangefinding and downrange zeroing.

Hi Michael

1) They say it is a standard because shooters (in the USA) still primarily use that combination. There is a resistance to learning a "new" method once one has been taught something else. That is what we see in the somewhat less than stellar adoption of a far superior methodology, namely MIL/MIL.

2) Either one is going to work well for you just use turrets that are graduated in the same units as your reticle. Personally I like MIL/MIL because it is truly metric. MILs are based upon radians and in the end the math boils down to radians. Using MIL/MIL does impose the use of meters for ranging. That is probably another contributing factor to the reluctance of the US shooting community to fully embracing MIL/MIL optics.

Michael,
This drives me crazy too!

I run mil-mil.

I just wish there was a good, cheap, FFP, mil-mil scope... oh well I can dream...

Just to amplify what 'Oldspook' has already stated,

the ENTIRE Optics Industry and the Physics behind it has used Metric standards for nigh on 200 years because of the close fit of practical measurements.

Marketing of Optics has naturally lagged behind that fact :-(

In our less precise World of shooting (compared to say, AstroTelescoping) the difference between MOA and MILL is probably subjective,

having turrets that match your reticle type is rather more important, however.


(The fact that they frequently DONT match is a demonstartion that the / 'our' Rifle Scope makers are quite willing to talk 'Bollocks' (as we say in Europe - is that allowed here?).

Well, all I can say is that after using a MIL/MIL - FFP scope, I'll never go back to a MOA/Mil SFP combination (unless something extraordinary happens.) I want a matched turret / reticle system and FFP. Just me.

If enough people hold out for that type of combination, the manufacturers will respond with models to fill the demand.

​Right now, we seem to be in a transitionary period for scopes where manufacturers are offering more Mil/Mil FFP scopes, but the cheaper models are still Mil/MOA - SFP, and they are still seeing demand for those inexpensive scopes and will keep making them until the buyers get smarter.