TG, if math is your strong suit then this stuff is right up your alley. When i 1st started investigating reticle-rangefinding i'd met this guy that was adapting Leupold's RES system for use on coyotes and he was having pretty good luck out to ~500 yds. or so with it. This was right before lasers came out and i was fascinated with what he was doing. At that time it was touted as the most accurate way to determine range for long shots, which was what i was into. So i started my research into the mil-dot for rangefinding, and once i understood that the most basic mil-ranging equation could be used with any multi-stadia reticle and not just the mil-dot that was a HUGE epiphany. Now i could use any 2 points to calculate range. I remember once i was talking about this stuff to a guy and i said u could range the moon with the simple plex reticle if u wanted once u knew what the stadia points subtended (measured) at any distance. Well the guy goes out and does it, and got within 5% of the true distance. I thought that was pretty neat.
I use every multi-stadia reticle i have for rangefinding from simple plex to Ballistic Plex to mil-dot, whatever. I have found that the finer the stadia subtension and the higher the magnification, the more accurate rangefinding is. Take this reticle for instance with the finest subtension at 0.2 mil--
Using this reticle to rangefind with u can interpolate (guess) to a level of ~.02 mil (~1 tenth of the .2 mil gaps--). I have one of these reticles (Leupold's TMR) in an 8.5-25x optic that allows me to reticle rangefind hard tgts. very accurately to ~1000 yds., because of the magnification and super-fine subtension. If i can guess the size of the tgt. accurately with this reticle i can always get the range within 3% of true distance. It's phenomenal how well ti works really. Here is the most basic equation that i use (inches to yds.)--
tgt. size (") x range of reticle subtension measurment (usually 100 yds.) / reticle subtension (") / "mil-reading" (decimal equivalent) = range (yds.)
Looks complicated, but super simple to apply. Hows about the Nikon 2-8x Nikoplex reticle (upper left corner of pg54 of Nikon's '10 catalog gives the subtension between post tips of 8.63 inch per hundred yds...@ 8x), and an 18" back to brisket deer that occupies 1/2 (0.5) of the post to post gap (x-hair to post tip). Just puch in the varaibles and u get--
18 x 100 / 8.63 / 0.5 = 417 yds.
Once the equation is understood u can "reverse-mil" with it to calculate tgt. size. One time we were at a shoot and one of the guys wanted to know the size of the 1000-yd. tgt. we were shooting at. A buddy had a mil-dot reticle that i measured on another tgt. at 500 yds. that i knew the measurement of (mil-dot was cald. for a power lower then the highest, and i wanted to use it the optic at a hgher power for increased accuracy). When i mild.' the thousand yd. tgt. and calcd. it out it came out 18.9". When we later measured the tgt. it was 19.2! I about fell over--adapting a reticle to measure a tgt. to a level of 0.3" accuracy at 1000 yds. was phenomenal i thought.
U wouldn't believe how much wrong information is circulating about reticle-rangefinding in the industry. Guys that own companies based upon the mil-dot don't know this stuff, and it's so simple. It amazes me the misinformation out there.
It takes just the right sort though. Your intuitive adaptation of the mil. reticle that u've shown in your posts already tells me that your one of those shooters, that has just a bit more than a passing interest in mathematics. Shooter + simple math is just the right combination really.
The End.