Which Reticle for Elcan 1/4x?

[mkollman74]

I am really intrigued by the Elcan 1/4/x for one of my ARs. I have heard that if running the 77gr bullets, I will want to run the 7.62 reticle instead of the 5.56 reticle. I have tried to find a diagram with subtensions. Can't find one. Does anyone know where I can find one so I can figure this out, or has anyone here already done the math?

I am planning on running this on a 14.5 barrel.

 

[Birddog6424]

Any BDC reticle will work. Match up your dope to the reticle hold over.

 

[mkollman74]

Any BDC reticle will work. Match up your dope to the reticle hold over.

Yeah, I am asking which of the two pre-calibrated reticles (5.56 or 7.62) will most closely match.

 

[The Durk]

That's highly dependent on the speed, BC, and weight of said caliber. I would assume the 762 reticle is calibrated for 147g 7.62 bullets, since that's what the military typically uses for non sniper rifles. It might be a wash, but I know my buddies 80g .223 loads are almost identical to my 175g 308 loads in bullet drop. I'd probably go for the 762 reticle.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

Without knowing your specific ammunition or muzzle velocity, I ran some numbers with a 77gr smk going about 2600'ish and a 100 yard zero.

Looks like if you go with the 5.56 reticle you'll be good out to 500 yards holding dead on. It starts to drop off from there and for 600 you'll have to hold the 600 hashmark near the bottom of the plate probably. Good enough for government work. Again, this was based off generic inputs like a 2.5" sight height, 2,000' DA, etc... When I used the same numbers for the 7.62 reticle they weren't anywhere close to lining up.

 

[mkollman74]

That's highly dependent on the speed, BC, and weight of said caliber. I would assume the 762 reticle is calibrated for 147g 7.62 bullets, since that's what the military typically uses for non sniper rifles. It might be a wash, but I know my buddies 80g .223 loads are almost identical to my 175g 308 loads in bullet drop. I'd probably go for the 762 reticle.

Thanks Durk. Good info.

 

[mkollman74]

Without knowing your specific ammunition or muzzle velocity, I ran some numbers with a 77gr smk going about 2600'ish and a 100 yard zero.

View attachment 7829499


Looks like if you go with the 5.56 reticle you'll be good out to 500 yards holding dead on. It starts to drop off from there and for 600 you'll have to hold the 600 hashmark near the bottom of the plate probably. Good enough for government work. Again, this was based off generic inputs like a 2.5" sight height, 2,000' DA, etc... When I used the same numbers for the 7.62 reticle they weren't anywhere close to lining up.

Thanks for taking the time. Very helpful. Which software is that? Is that the actual Elian reticle?

 

[Trigger Monkey]

Strelok Pro, it's about $12 in app stores and it's loaded with reticles, including the 5.56 BDC for the Elcan 1x/4x above.

 

[mkollman74]

Strelok Pro, it's about $12 in app stores and it's loaded with reticles, including the 5.56 BDC for the Elcan 1x/4x above.

My man! Perfect. Purchasing now. Thanks again. The ‘Hide never fails to deliver.

 

[The Durk]

Now that's killer. I didn't know Strelok did that.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

The Strelok Pro app has been pretty accurate dope wise and the diagrams make it awesome when doing reticle hold overs or working with Speed Drop. I'm not giving up my Kestrel Elite but the app is handy for things the Kestrel can't do.

 

[45custom]

Without knowing your specific ammunition or muzzle velocity, I ran some numbers with a 77gr smk going about 2600'ish and a 100 yard zero.

View attachment 7829499


Looks like if you go with the 5.56 reticle you'll be good out to 500 yards holding dead on. It starts to drop off from there and for 600 you'll have to hold the 600 hashmark near the bottom of the plate probably. Good enough for government work. Again, this was based off generic inputs like a 2.5" sight height, 2,000' DA, etc... When I used the same numbers for the 7.62 reticle they weren't anywhere close to lining up.

The Elcan's reticle uses metric ranges for the hashmarks. So the 3 mark is for 300 meters (~328 yards), 4 mark is for 400 meters (~437 yards), etc.

Sight height will be 2.75". The Elcan is 1.535" tall, + 1.215" for rail offset on a standard AR.

7.62 reticle is a "blended" BDC for M80 ball and 168 gr SMK, 2660 FPS with a G7 BC of .213 and a HoB of 2.85" should be about right.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

The Elcan's reticle uses metric ranges for the hashmarks. So the 3 mark is for 300 meters (~328 yards), 4 mark is for 400 meters (~437 yards), etc.

Sight height will be 2.75". The Elcan is 1.535" tall, + 1.215" for rail offset on a standard AR.

7.62 reticle is a "blended" BDC for M80 ball and 168 gr SMK, 2660 FPS with a G7 BC of .213 and a HoB of 2.85" should be about right.

The nice thing about Strelok (the program) is that it doesn't care if the reticle was designed for ranges in meters or around what bullet, it's only overlaying the data from my inputs over a specified reticle. The range marks are only in meters if I use the ammunition at the muzzle velocity it was designed for, otherwise they're just numbers. In this case, the slower speed but higher BC of the 77gr SMK compared to the M855 it was likely designed around means the trajectory happens to align better with ranges in yards to a certain point.

If I go back through the app and change just the sight height from 2.5" to 2.75" it actually aligns pretty damn well from 100-600 yards with a 77gr SMK going about 2600 fps.

Even with some spicier factory ammo, you could be looking at about 2,660 fps from a 14.5" barrel, which still puts you minute of man to 500 and holding the belly button at 600.

That would all need to be confirmed at distance but so far Strelok Pro has been pretty accurate for me.

 

[45custom]

The range marks are only in meters if I use the ammunition at the muzzle velocity it was designed for, otherwise they're just numbers.

By that I mean the autoranging function of the BDC is intended to work at metric ranges, i.e. the hashmark denotes a 19" width (approximately shoulder width) only at the multiples of 100 meters. Ideally, in order for this function to be as useful as possible, you'll want to match the hashmark widths to your drops.

You could, for example, technically have a bullet where the "3" line coincides with your bullet drop at 500 yards, but this would largely erase the function of the autoranging feature unless you could remember how wide every one of the hashmarks were at their respective ranges for your loading.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

By that I mean the autoranging function of the BDC is intended to work at metric ranges, i.e. the hashmark denotes a 19" width (approximately shoulder width) only at the multiples of 100 meters. Ideally, in order for this function to be as useful as possible, you'll want to match the hashmark widths to your drops.

You could, for example, technically have a bullet where the "3" line coincides with your bullet drop at 500 yards, but this would largely erase the function of the autoranging feature unless you could remember how wide every one of the hashmarks were at their respective ranges for your loading.

The ranging feature works out pretty good to distances in yards if you use the 18" width of an IPSC target.

 

[45custom]

Yeah you could certainly argue that it's splitting hairs, realistically not everyone has 19" shoulders anyway and the method of horizontal autoranging is inherently imprecise.

I am wondering though...where exactly did Strelok get their data? It looks like it may be from here:

ELCAN Specter DR 5.56 and 7.62 Reticle Data

Hopefully, Took me a while to get this data. Thought I would pass this data long in the hopes of assisting someone who might also be looking for it. I was able to get the correct ELCAN reticle data for the Specter DR series opics both 1-4x and 1.5-6x. My hope is to be able to get it added...

www.fnforum.net

There's an issue with that, though: The 7.62 data doesn't seem to make any logical sense from visual observation. Here is my 7.62 Elcan, for demonstration.

The post claims that the 600m and 700m aiming points are only 2.9 MOA apart, while the 300m hashmark is 6 MOA below the center dot. This seems wildly inconsistent with the photo of the actual reticle - it would suggest that the dot and the 300m hashmark should be further apart than the 600m stadia line and the middle of the 700m circle.

We also know that the 300m hashmark should be about 5.5 MOA wide, but it is wider than the distance between the center dot and the 300m hashmark!

At a glance, it appears these numbers are more accurate, simply extrapolating off the size of the 300m VSOR indicator (which should be about 8.73 MOA tall, as it is 30" @ 300m).

300: 4.6 MOA
400: 8.1 MOA
500: 12.3 MOA
600: 17.3 MOA
700: 24.3 MOA
800: 32.6 MOA
900: 40.5 MOA
1000: 51.0 MOA

These are all very approximate, but they are about the best I can do by eye.

I can do a quick sanity check on the 5.56 reticle later if I have the time.

Edit: I took a look at the fnforum post again and found that the numbers for the 700-1000m area circles actually agreed shockingly well with my own measurements. I wasn't even referring to that spreadsheet at all - it just happened by chance. So I guess something is correct, somewhere.

Everything inside of 700m, though, is quite different. I'm pretty sure that at least my 300m hashmark measurement is the more accurate of the two, as it agrees better with basically every reticle element with a known size (e.g. hashmark width, VSOR rangefinder, 1.5 MOA circle).

 

[mkollman74]

Found this on another forum...

 

[45custom]

That would be the one that I mentioned in my post above, which as noted doesn't appear consistent with the actual observation.

 

[mkollman74]

That would be the one that I mentioned in my post above, which as noted doesn't appear consistent with the actual observation.

Didn’t see your post.