Re: I hate mirage
Ah, Bryan tells of the virtues of indirect fire!
Phil Sharpe's book "The Rifle In America" (or "Modern Handloading"...I got both from my Dad) has a nice little description of USGI binoculars from WWII which had a reticle in one side which had a scale for squad leaders to direct fire that way. The operating theory was something about get the range to the target, place the scale between the target and a more easily-spotted aiming point, then read the scale to see what "yards" on the M1 Garand rear sights to have the riflemen use. It was supposed to work pretty well.
Now, to us old phart highpower shooters, it has been well-known since probably the 1950s if not before, described in every published scorebook/logbook I've seen, it was in the USAMTU manuals I've seen, and it has also been documented in some of our own logs, that mirage can offset the target *image* as seen at the firing line by about 1 MOA at 300 and 600. Being a guy who just chased the spotter, I never paid too much attention to it. For iron sights, I did notice that mirage from calm conditions or 6:00 or 12:00 winds often offset the general rule of "lights up, sights up".