Mildots vs. Magnification

Jump to latest Follow Reply
fishinwrench

fishinwrench

Member
Nov 25, 2017
589
16
mo
How do I rely on mildots when I increase/decrease magnification, or can I ?

For example; With my scope on 6x the distance between mildots is pretty much exactly the thickness of a squirrels head at 40 yards, but when cranked up to 9x that isn't so. Therefore if mildots spacing changes depending on magnification power....what the hell good are mildots ?

I'm having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around this. 🤔
 
How do I rely on mildots when I increase/decrease magnification, or can I ?

For example; With my scope on 6x the distance between mildots is pretty much exactly the thickness of a squirrels head at 40 yards, but when cranked up to 9x that isn't so. Therefore if mildots spacing changes depending on magnification power....what the hell good are mildots ?

I'm having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around this. 🤔
Click to expand...

The subtension spacing in a SFP reticle is inversely proportional to magnification.

At 50 yards and 6X, the dots should be 3" apart. At 18X they will be 1"apart. And at 9x, they will be 2" apart. It's a logical and repeatable configuration.

If you don't like even simple on the fly math, than get a FFP scope. But then you must accept that the reticle will increase in the FOV along with the image. No math but it can make the reticle more difficult to read at some magnifications.
 
Upvote 0
the problem ive been having with the single first focal plane scopes is that the cross hairs usually grow too thick upon zooming in..... i've learned to just leave my mildot scopes on around 5 power while hunting........70 yards out , on the telephone line along the tracks , adjacent to the red-top cane fields + two mildot hold over with benjamin discovery shooting 13.5 gr air arms falcon (jsb lites) pellets at 845 fps = eurasian dove wrapped in bacon baked together in the oven......mmmm......
 
Upvote 0
Fwiw, the Crosman .22 pellet tin is about one mil dot wide at 100yard. 3..6-ish inches. At 50 yards, that puts the tin from 1 dot left to 1 dot right of the crosshair. 

Find a repeatable metric and use it until it is second nature to you. I have a 4-12 SFP on my .25mrod that I run at 5x and 10x most of the time. The range card is set for the 5x, knowing that the hold over and hold under is doubled on 10x. Most of my hunting is done at 5x for the benefit of larger field of view for spotting and tracking ground squirrels.
 
  • Like
Reactions: fishinwrench
Upvote 0
the problem ive been having with the single first focal plane scopes is that the cross hairs usually grow too thick upon zooming in..... i've learned to just leave my mildot scopes on around 5 power while hunting........70 yards out , on the telephone line along the tracks , adjacent to the red-top cane fields + two mildot hold over with benjamin discovery shooting 13.5 gr air arms falcon (jsb lites) pellets at 845 fps = eurasian dove wrapped in bacon baked together in the oven......mmmm......
Click to expand...



A well designed FFP reticle can mostly get around that problem. Standard mil-dots were designed for SFP scopes. Putting a standard mil-dot reticle (or almost any SFP reticle) in an FFP scope is a half baked solution. For FFP scopes, reticle thickness and subtension spacing takes some extra thought during the design process. Some newer FFP reticles have thick lines to display the outer subtensions when zoomed out, and thin lines to display the inner closely-spaced subtensions when zoomed in. Example:



When getting an FFP scope, reticle choice is very important since the the reticle appearance changes with magnification.
 
Upvote 0
the problem ive been having with the single first focal plane scopes is that the cross hairs usually grow too thick upon zooming in..... i've learned to just leave my mildot scopes on around 5 power while hunting........70 yards out , on the telephone line along the tracks , adjacent to the red-top cane fields + two mildot hold over with benjamin discovery shooting 13.5 gr air arms falcon (jsb lites) pellets at 845 fps = eurasian dove wrapped in bacon baked together in the oven......mmmm......
Click to expand...



A well designed FFP reticle can mostly get around that problem. Standard mil-dots were designed for SFP scopes. Putting a standard mil-dot reticle (or almost any SFP reticle) in an FFP scope is a half baked solution. For FFP scopes, reticle thickness and subtension spacing takes some extra thought during the design process. Some newer FFP reticles have thick lines to display the outer subtensions when zoomed out, and thin lines to display the inner closely-spaced subtensions when zoomed in. Example:



When getting an FFP scope, reticle choice is very important since the the reticle appearance changes with magnification.
Click to expand...


Scotchmo - something looks off on your pic. Shouldn't the MOA visible across the diameter of the scope at 6x be 1/4 of the MOA visible at 24X?

The ratio to me looks to be 3/8's (160 vs 60) and not 1/4 (160 vs 40). Am I missing something? I would think that the 160MOA bracket (at 6x) should be the exact same length as the 40MOA bracket (at 24x).
 
Upvote 0

Scotchmo - something looks off on your pic. Shouldn't the MOA visible across the diameter of the scope at 6x be 1/4 of the MOA visible at 24X?

The ratio to me looks to be 3/8's (160 vs 60) and not 1/4 (160 vs 40). Am I missing something? I would think that the 160MOA bracket (at 6x) should be the exact same length as the 40MOA bracket (at 24x).
Click to expand...

The MOA visible across the diameter of a scope at 6x should be 4X (not 1/4) of the MOA visible at 24x.

But you are correct that the picture is off for 6x vs 24x. It looks to me more like 9x vs 24x. I did not have a picture of the actual reticle so I used a illustrated example that I found on-line.

But hopefully you can see the idea for the FFP reticle with graduated thickness.


 
Upvote 0
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back
Home
Forums
Resources
Menu