The TARGET SCALING Lane 2 is comprised of a series of different sized bullseyes stacked vertically on the page. They are labelled as S1 through S9. Each bullseye and gray background square represent a 10” plate at the stated yardages underneath each target, when viewed from 100 yards away. In other words, if are viewing S1 through your scope, the S1 square is what you would see if a 10” plate were sitting out at 200 yards. Another example is viewing S6, which represents how big a 10” plate will look like at 700 yards.
A 10” plate size is used on this targeting system for two reasons:
-
It represents a 1 MOA target at 1000 yards
-
It is used to simulate nearly 1000 yards on Lane 3 (RED - Elevation) and Lane 4 (BLUE - Elevation & Windage) sections.
TARGET SCALING Lane 2 has the distinction of NOT having a Point of AIM target and a separate Point of Impact. The POA and POI are the same. The purpose of this lane is different from the rest in several ways.
TARGET SCALING Lane 2 is an accurate representation of distance. If you want to see if you can hit a 10” plate at 500 yards, shoot at S4. When you can hit S4 consistently, move on to S5 which simulates a 10” target at 600 yards, and so forth.
This lane also introduces you to manually ranging a known sized target using your scope reticle. Estimating the MOA or MIL measurement of a known 10” target using your scope allows you to determine the distance to that target.
Ballistic Calculators often have this ranging calculator in their feature set. Simply measure the target in MIL or MOA, and plug that number into the appropriate calculator, resulting in the distance to target.
To demonstrate this, consider viewing the S1 target through your MOA reticle. It will look like this:
The target measures about 4.8 MOA. The target measures about 4.8 MOA. As a side note, the value you measured may differ from the actual value depending on the type of scope you have. If you have a First Focal Plane (FFP) scope your measured value is correct. If you have a Second Focal Plane (SFP) scope, you will need to adjust this value depending on the magnification your scope is set to when measuring the target. Please see your scope manual for further discussion. For this example, we are assuming a FFP scope.
If you plug this into the formula:
Target SIZE (which we have given you as 10”), multiplied by 95.5, divided by the MOA measurement, or
10” Target x 95.5 / 4.8 MOA = 955/4.8 = 199 yards to target
Note: The 95.5 in the equation is a 1 inch MOA Estimate Constant which keeps our inches constant to our MOA. Remember that 1 MOA at 100 yards is 1.047 inches and not exactly 1 inch. This factor compensates for that difference.
As a bonus, TARGET SCALING Lane 2 simply gives you a lot of targets to shoot at, extending the life of this target to several range visits. This statement rings true for the target in general.