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Reticle library · Leupold

Leupold Illuminated FireDot BDC

Drawn to scale from Leupold’s own specification sheet, and checked mark by mark by a person. This is the same geometry Harson Ballistics draws your holdover on.

Leupold Illuminated FireDot BDC — second focal plane, MRAD subtensions

Framed to about 12 MRAD — the part of the reticle you aim with. This reticle carries marks out to 17.1 MRAD; the rest sits beyond the edge of this drawing.

Drawn from Leupold & Stevens, Inc.’s published specification.

The numbers

Manufacturer
Leupold
Reticle
Illuminated FireDot BDC
Focal plane
second focal plane
Units
MRAD
Magnification
—

In the second focal plane the subtensions are only true at one magnification — check your manual for which, and dial there before you hold.

Subtensions

Official 2021 Reticles PDF page 28. SFP, true at highest available magnification. Published drop holds below center: 0.84 / 1.30 / 1.81 / 2.35 / 2.95 MIL. Additional short hashes labeled 0.50 / 0.75 / 1.00 / 1.38 MIL. Fine-line weight 0.20 MIL; heavy-line weight 0.41 MIL; inner end of horizontal thick posts at ±4.24 MIL. Center FireDot drawn, diameter not labeled — omitted. Hash lengths of the hold bars are drawn but not numerically labeled except as the hold distance from center; bar half-widths above are illustrative of the drawn widening and should be treated as approximate from the diagram rather than a printed width table. Illumination: official 2021 Reticles PDF — “Fiber-optic powered center red-dot”; 2026 catalog — “NOTE: All Firedot reticles are illuminated” and “daylight-visible red illuminated FireDot in the center”. Only the center FireDot glows. Diameter is drawn but not numbered, so no invented d on the center dot.

How this one was checked

Verified 11 Sep 2026 against 2021 Leupold Reticles PDF page 28, read from the page's vector strokes (pymupdf). Palette as page 29, not 27/43: ink (0.136,0.119,0.128), grey leaders (0.399,0.403,0.402). Scale 7.80 px/MIL, derived from all five published drops at once - 0.84/1.30/1.81/2.35/2.95 MIL measure 6.51/10.145/14.17/18.335/23.035 px, giving 7.75/7.80/7.83/7.80/7.81. Confirmed by fine line 1.59px=0.204MIL [0.20], heavy line 3.19px=0.409MIL [0.41] and all four post inner ends at 4.19-4.25MIL [4.24]. CORRECTED, the same class of error as page 29: 0.50, 0.75, 1.00 and 1.38 MIL are the BAR WIDTHS, not positions. The record carried them as four extra hashes at y=-0.50, -0.75, -1.00 and -1.38, which do not exist on the sheet, and gave the five real drop bars invented widths in a tidy 0.5/0.6/0.7/0.8/0.9 progression. Measured widths tie each callout to its bar: 0.84->0.758 [0.75], 1.30->0.501 [0.50], 1.81->1.050 [1.00], 2.35->0.501 [0.50], 2.95->1.359 [1.38]. Note the widths are NOT monotonic - 1.81 is wider than 2.35 - which is why an assumed progression could never have matched. The four phantom hashes are removed and the five bars now carry their published widths. Bar stroke 0.17MIL, measured (1.31-1.34px); the 0.20MIL Fine Lines callout describes the crosshair, which measures 0.204. EXTENTS: all four arms reach 17.10 MIL, where the field-of-view circle is; the record previously ran the vertical line to an arbitrary 10 above centre and the posts to 20. 17.1 is the drawn extent, not a published figure - nothing is called out for it. CHECKLIST negatives: no marks above centre, none on the windage axis, and no top post - the vertical line runs unbroken from centre to the circle. Confirmed by measurement, not by eye. FIREDOT DIAMETER - question closed 12 Sep 2026, deliberately NOT modelled. The red dot is drawn to a different size on all three Mark 3HD pages: 0.142 MIL (p27 TMR), 0.809 (p28 BDC), 1.045 (p29 SPR). Three drawings of the same dot disagreeing by 7x cannot all be to scale, so none of them is a measurement of the dot. Every diameter Leupold actually PUBLISHES in this catalogue is far smaller - 0.05MIL and 0.03MIL on page 19, 0.3MOA (0.087MIL) on page 16 - and all three drawn dots exceed the largest of them. The dot is therefore drawn oversized so it reads at print size, an illustration convention. The record claims no diameter and the renderer's 0.1 MIL default stands, which is nearer Leupold's published 0.03-0.087 band than any of the three measurements. Do not 'correct' this to a measured value.

Subtensions are published by the manufacturer and reproduced here for reference. Confirm your own dope on a range before you rely on any of it. Harson.ai is not affiliated with Leupold.