Angle Adjusted Range vs Line of Sight and Angle

[Cold_Bore_88]

Guys,

Running some math through my AB app (considering some new range finder Swaro binos) and I noticed that.....

the output for 1000 yards at 30 degrees is 6.6 MRAD. When I put in 866 (corrected angle distance) at 0 degrees my output is 6.1. Using 6.5 Creed.

Can someone help me understand the reasoning/physics behind this? This would mean a lot of those “angle corrected distances” are not the proper output/answer for what we do. That’s a half MRAD difference.

 

[Lowlight]

You have to do line of sight range, not corrected with AB

Several apps work that way, use the actual range and then add in the angle or cosine, not corrected

 

[ShtrRdy]

If you're using a ballistic calculator, it's better to use the line of sight distance, and angle, and let the program calculate a more accurate solution.

Using angle distance is an approximation called "the riflemans rule"and has some error. There's another approximation called the "improved riflemans rule" which multiplies the cosine of the angle with the drop value you would use for the line of sight distance. It too has some error but not as bad.