MOA vs. MRAD in Scope Adjustments

now when it comes to telescope adjustments you have to realize that telescopes don't adjust in inches or centimeters despite what it may say on the knob telescopes adjust in an angular value typically the angular values are either MOA war em wraps MOA standing for minutes of angle and M rads standing for milliradians now what's the difference between these two and why use one rather than the other well minutes of angle are pretty typical on US manufactured telescopes because it's a circle 360 degrees in a circle 60 minutes in each degree and we simply break down the circle that way so one minute of angle corresponds to some portion of this circle now how much is that in a linear measurement you have to have the distance to know as it happens at 100 yards 1 MOA 1.04 7 inches and that's close enough to an inch that people round off and say a minute is 1 inch at a hundred yards well that's fine for a very short distance but if we go to a thousand yards what's 1 minute 10 and a half inches very nearly ten point four seven inches so there's a tolerance stack error there if you're not careful milliradians break down a circle into 6,000 two hundred eighty three point four divisions well that's a decidedly inconvenient number okay so you'll find on your compass they rounded off to 6400 there are various ways to break this down but that's the mathematically correct value and that's what most riflescopes all but about one or two rifle scopes are based on the six thousand two hundred eighty-three well that makes mill rads slightly more coarse than a minute because usually what you use are point one Miller ad divisions rather than one quarter MOA point one Miller ad at one hundred yards is 0.36 inches and a quarter of a minute at one hundred yards is point two six inches now what's the practical difference between these two basically nothing Mill rads are done in base ten basically right there's ten clicks between one bill and two mils minutes are usually quarters sometimes even eighths so there's four clicks between cardinal numbers or eight clicks between cardinal numbers does that really mean anything no what's important is that your reticle match the type of knob that you have if you have a mil reticle you would like to have your knobs adjust and mill rats if you have a minute radical you'd like your knobs to adjust in minutes that way you won't have to convert seeing what you see here to dial what you need to dial there I could very easily have a mill reticle in fact it was fairly common to have mill reticles with minute knobs okay if I'm one mill off and I want a zero the gun how far do I move the knob in minutes oh well that's inconvenient because there are three point four three eight minutes to a mill yeah now I have to do some math to figure out what to do to move the knob whereas if I have a mill knob and a mill reticle and I'm one mill off how many divisions do I move on the scope okay i dial through the next number if I have to move half a mill I'm on tile five clicks fairly painless and the same thing if your minute reticle is matched with a minute knob if you're two minutes off dial two minutes on the elevation knob there you go so is one better than the other is one smarter than the other no it makes no difference whatsoever note that milliradians have nothing to do with metric people seem to think that it's easier to measure in meters and target sizes and centimeters because well this is base ten has nothing to do with metric right milliradian is not a metric unit of measure it just happens to be a 1 to 1000 relationship you

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Length: 6min 19sec (379 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 30 2019