Eley: Masters of marketing

[edgerat]

A good friend of mine and I were having a chat the other day about velocity and some people's fascination with it as it relates to the ambient temperatures in the different seasons and our little guns. Anyone find an interesting correlation between the Fall and Winter coming and all of the Eley ammo coming into the Country right now is 1075+??? Seems those blokes have got us yanks figured out and they are trying to take advantage of those of us that pay extra attention to velocity. Sure would be interesting to get a chrono on it.
From the grassy knoll,
Isaac

 

[garrisone]

Been saying the same thing for the last two years. That is one reason why R B A is dying. Some of us don't have deep pockets and therefore can't keep up with the cost. Some are quiting and others are cutting back. They make good ammo but dam their consistant price jumps. garrisone.

 

[Pete Wass]

A friend bought a case of 1082 fps that shot lights out in 100* heat but in the current ambient of 60ish, it doesn't! Are they sending us speeds that ain't gonna woik?

 

[bob finger]

FWIW. Saw this thread and opened my ammo spreadsheet. Recent testing on Eley ammo, blue, black and red box revealed the following:
published speed average speed
1052..........................1054
1071..........................1077
1042..........................1059
1055..........................1072
1055..........................1062
1060..........................1060
1074..........................1064
1056..........................1071
1056..........................1073

Average spread in Eley ammo is about 30-35 fps. Once in a while you find killer ammo that has a spread of 15 or less, but it has been a rare find indeed. My Chrony is set 5 feet from the muzzle.I pull 25 bullets at random from however many boxes I have for initial speed test. bob

 

[glp]

I don't shoot competitive rimfire. I do shoot some club fun shoots with a 40X and two Rem 37's and occasionally with a 52C. NONE of those rifles will shoot ANY eley 10X or black box that I've tried. I've tried old stuff(10+ years) and current. Sunday at a fun shoot I tried some black box in a 37. It shot a 3" squarish group at 100 yds. I guess the only thing I can do is get a tuner made for the barrel contour? Or, stick with Federal 922A that shoots great...last 2 score targets at 100 yds were all inside the 1" 10 ring with Fed ammo. Just an interesting thing to observe! --Greg

 

[edgerat]

Somebody just made a very valid point, could it be the importer's that are to "blame" for this fast ammo in Fall/Winter??? After all, doesn't Eley make their money regardless?

 

[frey]

It's all just coincidence

I asked at the Worlds in SC last month about the faster stuff.
There were 2 Eley reps there.

Word is Eley was working with their powder metering and ended up producing faster stuff at that time.

Word also is the future shipments should see velocities returning to what they were.

There's no conspiracy or collusion going on. Just coincidence.

Anyone shot the 1080's stuff?
I haven't, but figure it's got just as good of chance being good as the slower stuff.
It's really about the machine first anyway.

 

[Hambone]

Been saying the same thing for the last two years. That is one reason why R B A is dying. Some of us don't have deep pockets and therefore can't keep up with the cost. Some are quiting and others are cutting back. They make good ammo but dam their consistant price jumps. garrisone.

They have to find a way to pay for all this marketing. I never found an ammo manufacturer yet that ever put their prices down despite cost savings from improved production volumes, or raw material cost reductions. Have found they are all mighty quick to put the costs up though as soon as raw material prices increase.

 

[Dave Shattuck]

Pete Wass and I have the same mutual friend, and I was there at the Worlds when he did his testing. He tried three different lots with two showing no hope, but the third being absolutely "killer" ammo, so naturally he bought a full case of that "killer" ammo. Made sense at the time. Only problem was, it was 108° on the day he tested those lots, so when he returned back to reality that killer ammo turned out to be a full case of $1200+ carp ammo, and those other two lots, which he had less than a box each of after ruling them out, were where he should have spent his money. Case in point: the first match he attended after returning home he let another shooter borrow one of his guns, gave him what was left of the rejected test lots to shoot, and the fellow immediately turned around and shot a 250 with it.

Living in the northeast I have always been an advocate for not testing ammo during the dead of winter, or even during the early spring or late fall. Once the temperature drops below 50°, speed will drop so much that you won't get anywhere near the results of what you'll see once summer comes. Even though it makes prefect sense to test ammo at around the same temperature range as you'll be competing with it, I had no idea the same variance would hold true when temps skyrocket above 100°. So, now I would hold the line on only testing when the temps are between 55 and 85° as that is where we are during the majority of our shooting season.

Have you ever considered airguns? Top-of-the-line ammo will cost you less than $10.00 for a tin of pellets (500) and will mean that you and a couple of friends can sit down for an entire afternoon of shooting, and you'll still have enough left over for a match or two. Plus, if you drop a pellet, so what! They cost less than .02¢ each, and not the .25¢ - 40¢, or more, that rimfire has climbed to. Just a thought.

Dave Shattuck

 

[edgerat]

Dave, I do shoot 10m in my garage during the Fall and Winter I stand in the very corner of the garage and shoot to the pellet trap in the other corner. Not enough room to setup a bench so, I shoot standing.

 

[frey]

Have you ever considered airguns? Top-of-the-line ammo will cost you less than $10.00 for a tin of pellets (500) and will mean that you and a couple of friends can sit down for an entire afternoon of shooting, and you'll still have enough left over for a match or two. Plus, if you drop a pellet, so what! They cost less than .02¢ each, and not the .25¢ - 40¢, or more, that rimfire has climbed to. Just a thought.

Dave Shattuck

You bet I have. Been itchin to pick up an AA EV2 ever since the Worlds.

 

[tim]

Isn't there also somewhat of a recent trend in getting shipments after the large ISSF buyers[i.e. Chinese] get first dibs on it, the red box in particular?

 

[edgerat]

I would imagine that the amount of ammo that the rimfire benchrest crowd gets is a tiny fraction of what the ISSF and UIT guys buy. I would like to see how some of that "cream" ammo shoots

 

[garrisone]

Good Luck!! Hope you can someday but it wont be anytime soon. Where did the conspriecy idea come from? garrisone.

 

[Hambone]

I would imagine that the amount of ammo that the rimfire benchrest crowd gets is a tiny fraction of what the ISSF and UIT guys buy. I would like to see how some of that "cream" ammo shoots

Your right, the quants the BR crowd manage to chew their way thru in a season amounts to a couple of 5Gal buckets of water when compared to an Olympic size swimming pool the target crowd get thru in a year. Thats why the ammunition manufacturers aren't bothered whether we grow as a sport or dry up and blow away like tumble weed in those old '40's B movie westerns.

 

[Hambone]

Good Luck!! Hope you can someday but it wont be anytime soon. Where did the conspriecy idea come from? garrisone.

Conspiracy or cartel? There are only a few players and I know which way I lean.

 

[Hambone]

Have you ever considered airguns?

I had this conversation last year with some of my c/f BR shooting contacts. Consensus of opinion was we'd all rather simply just pack it in if it ever came to such a choice. I couldn't cope with the boredom factor!

 

[bigredplane]

OK here's me just thinking out loud. I shot some BR.22 about 23 years ago. I always shot R50 had the best luck with it back then. Now let's fast forward about 20 years I started shooting again. But this time I look around nobody shooting R50. Ninety % of the people are shooting Black box eley and some redbox. So thats what I been useing. Then I see someone selling R50 with a lot of lot numbers to pick from. So I tested some 8 lots of R50. I'm in the NE. IND. When I tested the weather was in the 90's Hot and Hum. I found a lot that would shoot groups in the "0" on a consistent basis. Now the weather is in the 60's low hum and it is still shooting groups in the "0". I have no idea how fast it is I don't have a Chrony. All I know is that it's louder then the Eley so I would assume it's faster. We all know that RWS don't publish machine # or lot speeds. Now back to the title of this thread Eley: Masters of marketing. Some times I wonder if we didn't have those numbers on the Eley boxes to look at and make us think what would we do, how would we analyze the ammo. Here again this is me just thinking, but with the RWS R50 the only thing to analyze is the holes in the paper where it really counts. Now I have heard that RWS has started putting the speed on the boxes but I havn't seen any yet. Maybe someone has. To me it's alot easier to pick alot if all have to judge it by is the holes in the paper.

Scott

 

[tuna921]

I think the speeds are a non issue....

Eley uses from what I understand Anschutz barrels, who knows what twist or grooves ........so when we test them in different conditions they are going to have different chrono readings then we have

 

[dankillough]

Jeff Miller is correct, it is just coincidence. At the World Championships in SC, Andrew Lane and Daniel Olley attended. Andrew Lane is Eley's Managing Director or what we would call the "President" and Daniel Olley is the Sr. Business Development Manager. Daniel takes care of the U.S. market as well as many others. They both answered many questions from all of the competitors. Here are a few of the questions that I heard them answer over and over.

1. "Why was this latest shipment of ammo so much faster than previous shipments"
It mainly has to do with the priming mixture. Eley produces its own primer and they closely monitor it. They try to keep the mixture the same all of the time, but it is extremely difficult to achieve that. They monitor the accuracy of the ammo produced and if the speed starts getting too fast or too slow for optimum accuracy, then they adjust accordingly. The last shipment of ammo just happened to be slightly faster than what we are accustomed to, but the accuracy at the Eley factory is still within their guidelines.

2. "China gets all of the good ammo, and the U.S. gets all of the leftovers." Right after I asked them this question, an Australian competitor comes and asks why the U.S. gets all of the good ammo and Australia gets the leftovers. Andrew and Daniel both assured all of the competitors that "All of the ammo is available to all of the competitors all of the time" If the U.S. puts in an order for 500 cases of Match, then they go to the warehouse and pull out 500 cases. What they get is what they get. They do not pick and choose. The same goes for any other country with an order.

3. "The speed of the ammo is manipulated for marketing purposes"
The folks at Eley go to work everyday to produce Tenex which is arguably the most accurate .22 ammunition in the world. They are concerned with accuracy, and the velocity falls where it may. They do not care if it is 1040 or 1080, as long as it meets their accuracy standards. They just print the velocity and lot number on the box as a courtesy to the customers.

I hope this helps explain some of the rumors around Eley.