Eley vs S-K ?

I want to try Eley Club and Contact. I heard Club being setter than sport and some say Contact can shoot equal to SK STD plus.

I mainly shoot Sport due to my CT selling it for 7.99 a box.

boxhitch said:
what do you consider as entry level match or upper tier ammo in the S-K lineup?
it makes sense with any testing the upper tier would have 2 or 3 rankings of quality or consistency
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It varies to the person. Bench rest person will say if you dont shoot center x or blab blab there is no point.

My club considers SK mag, STD plus, Long Range, Rifle match mid level. Tenex, Midus Plus high end.
 
I just ordered some Club TO TRY from Tenda @ $ 99.99/Brick, plus some others I haven't used to get to $300- Free Shpg. - You know you want to . . .
 
OkayShooter said:
I want to try Eley Club and Contact. I heard Club being setter than sport and some say Contact can shoot equal to SK STD plus.

I mainly shoot Sport due to my CT selling it for 7.99 a box.



It varies to the person. Bench rest person will say if you dont shoot center x or blab blab there is no point.

My club considers SK mag, STD plus, Long Range, Rifle match mid level. Tenex, Midus Plus high end.
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Club is generally better than Sport in my experience, and I'd place Club a notch below Std Plus for the lots that I've tried. After saying that, I haven't tried Club for a few years now.

I tested a box of Contact yesterday through my 54, it shot about as well as the Std Plus I've been using.

It could probably do a little better or worse, I wasn't at my best either.

I did notice that it needed more force than usual to get a round seated in the chamber, but the empties extracted and ejected normally. It's possible that the driving band on the bullet is further ahead than on the SK/Lapua, so it engages the rifling sooner. Or, it's slightly larger diameter.

I've started using a 25 shot group at a single aim point. It gives some opportunity for the flyers in the box to make their presence known.

If it's repeatable, I consider that as being enough to decide if a particular lot is worth investing in.

I had good luck with Contact in my CZ a few years ago, and it's at a price point I'm comfortable with.

The 42 grain bullet is an Eley thing, as far as I know.

The rifle shoots Tenex great, but it's out of my budget for regular use.
 
OkayShooter said:
I want to try Eley Club and Contact. I heard Club being setter than sport and some say Contact can shoot equal to SK STD plus.

I mainly shoot Sport due to my CT selling it for 7.99 a box.



It varies to the person. Bench rest person will say if you dont shoot center x or blab blab there is no point.

My club considers SK mag, STD plus, Long Range, Rifle match mid level. Tenex, Midus Plus high end.
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I use my positional groups to guide my ammo choice. If my positional groups (10-20 shoots) from solid props are approaching my bench groups, an ammo upgrade is in order. For my uses, Eley Team seems to perform as well as Match, while being a bit cheaper. Both of them still have vertical and horizontal flyers that open up a group well past 1” at 100 though. All my SK from S+ to LRM performed the same and have been quite temperature sensitive velocity wise.
 
Chilly807 said:
Club is generally better than Sport in my experience, and I'd place Club a notch below Std Plus for the lots that I've tried. After saying that, I haven't tried Club for a few years now.

I tested a box of Contact yesterday through my 54, it shot about as well as the Std Plus I've been using.

It could probably do a little better or worse, I wasn't at my best either.

I did notice that it needed more force than usual to get a round seated in the chamber, but the empties extracted and ejected normally. It's possible that the driving band on the bullet is further ahead than on the SK/Lapua, so it engages the rifling sooner. Or, it's slightly larger diameter.

I've started using a 25 shot group at a single aim point. It gives some opportunity for the flyers in the box to make their presence known.

If it's repeatable, I consider that as being enough to decide if a particular lot is worth investing in.

I had good luck with Contact in my CZ a few years ago, and it's at a price point I'm comfortable with.

The 42 grain bullet is an Eley thing, as far as I know.

The rifle shoots Tenex great, but it's out of my budget for regular use.
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Yeah I heard Club is better than Sport. Why I want to try. Tomorrow I'm dropping by Greenwood CT and ask if they can bring in a brick of Club. I only run Eley as I don't have to pay shipping. It can give me SUB 1/2" groups. But that 64 and me have to work overtime to come close to the black hole of AV 54s shooters.

I seen that they had Eley Edge but 2 dollars more a box than Contact. I yet to find a review dispite being for prone rifle, or match pistol a group under 1/2" most close to 5/8.
 
Chilly807 said:
The thing that's often missed in any conversation about "which level shoots best" is the fact that we're talking more about ammo consistency levels.
To clarify, let's say you have 3 different lots of Std Plus, and 3 different lots of Rifle Match.
You shoot test targets with all 6 lots, on the same day under the same conditions.

You may find that the lower grade ammo outshoots the higher grade in your rifle, under those conditions.
That shouldn't happen, you say.

All that means is that your rifle, for whatever reason, prefers that particular lot of ammo, and none of the higher grade lots had the same characteristics. If they did, you'd have found better results with one of them, in all likelihood.

The lower grade will probably have more flyers than the higher grade, but that gets lost in the noise from the higher grade not shooting well in your rifle.

And to make it even better, the lot that was pure magic in your rifle in cool temperatures may not shoot well in the heat of summer, or vice versa.
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I concur...unfortunately, most rimfire shooters don't reload centerfire ammo at high levels (they may not shoot centerfire at all). Otherwise, many of the 'defects' we see in rimfire can be correlated in all the various tuning steps centerfire shooters see and do.. and how it relates to the specific rifle they are loading for.

wrt to temps, I am now keeping an eye on temps per 5C bands. It most certainly matters... as it will affect both ammo AND rifle.

Jerry
 
Eley actually lists the expected shot radius SD for all their ammo in their brochure, removing the need for any speculation as to which one should be better. Just don't forget, in every case it still matters whether or not a particular lot number gets along with your gun. ;)

Tenex 3.75 mm
Tenex Pistol 4.05 mm
Tenex Biathlon 4.50 mm
Match 4.74 mm
Match Pistol 4.90 mm
Semi-Auto Benchrest Precision 4.90 mm
Team 5.50 mm
Club 5.50 mm
Biathlon Club 5.50 mm
Sport 7.00 mm
Target 7.00 mm
Bullseye Pistol X 7.00 mm
Contact 7.00 mm
Force 7.00 mm
Semi-Auto Benchrest Outlaw 7.00 mm

edit: And for these few rounds they list Max MG, or maximum mean group size.

Tenex Rapid Fire Pistol 20 mm
High Velocity Hollow 30 mm
Subsonic Hollow 43 mm
 
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OkayShooter said:
...that 64 and me have to work overtime to come close to the black hole of AV 54s shooters.

I seen that they had Eley Edge but 2 dollars more a box than Contact. I yet to find a review dispite being for prone rifle, or match pistol a group under 1/2" most close to 5/8.
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Yeah, most of the 54's that came on the market recently seem to make their way to AV.. it IS a black hole for Anschutz.
Al and Randy have done a great job of lighting a fire under the rifle section. I think we just picked up another young shooter, and I have the feeling she might beat us all.

I've used Edge before, but not much of it. It worked OK in the rifle I had at the time, quite good actually.
Whether it's 1 minute capable at 50 yds I can't say, the rifle I was using was just capable of that level, and the operator was a maybe on a good day .. ;)
Having said that, Edge "should" hold 1 minute at 50. Contact certainly will in my experience, provided it's a lot that works in your rifle.
The lot I tested on the weekend did, for all intents and purposes.
25 shot group at 50 yds was slightly over .5", with the shooter sneezing every 5 shots and whacked on cold meds.
 
boxitch - No, I got some Norma sub and Eley Sport. Still on the fence re some .223, with tax I'd be around $ 0.69/round with the PMC. That's about $2-ish less than 'per/box pricing'. I've got some of that I bought a couple years ago for $15+tx, which is what Tendas selling indiv boxes for now. And BP/Cab is at $19+tx. Due to another thread, I saw North Sylva advising that Lake City is halting Civilian sales of 5.56 so prices will likely start to rise when the demand here in N-Am feels that. Maybe now is the time to buy .223/5.56?
 
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PS - I'm just trying various flavours on my VMTR for this order. SK+ and SK-RM both shoot about equally well and I'm running down to my last couple hundred rounds of those. They may last this season but not much longer with 1-200 rounds per range trip.
As for the .223, I've got a couple Cs of the PMC which shoots pretty accurately and some SP of Barnaul and MFS and Sako that will work for hunting. Still, if supplies may dry up . . .
 
Buck1950, just a heads up on the PMC 223.. a friend recently bought several boxes for his Savage Axis. Several fail-to-fire in each box, with good firing pin strikes on each. There was some noise on the 'net a few years ago about the same thing, but not much lately. Might be a recurring problem.
 
_Shorty said:
Eley actually lists the expected shot radius SD for all their ammo in their brochure, removing the need for any speculation as to which one should be better. Just don't forget, in every case it still matters whether or not a particular lot number gets along with your gun. ;)

Tenex 3.75 mm
Match 4.74 mm
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Thanks for the great info.

I may be screwing up here but I make that Tenex at 0.148 inches and Match is 0.187. I have shot and digitized 600 F Class SBR 50 yard targets. Thus I have 600 SD values for 40 shot samples of various SK and Lapua(Cx and Biathlon X). At a glance in my black book the vast majority of the SK beats the Match and a good bit of it beats the Tenex.

If I'm not misunderstanding something here I'd have to say my Vudoo repeater is pretty happy with the SK. I'm shooting outdoors with flags in all temps and conditions. My low temp cutoff is somewhere in the -15 to -18C range. That may sound extreme but it has its rewards. Last week I laid in the snow for 2.5 hours in while it lightly rained but it was dead still. I did three days worth of testing in a day and had three wolves walk by, passing within 25 yards after I had put 70 rounds down range. Go figure ... I guess they are used to me being out there.

EDIT Upon further review I found my error. I was looking at mean radii which are always less than the mean radius SD. In that light my SK results seldom get in the Tenex range but they do OK against Match a surprising amount of the time. I knew I had something F'd up.
 
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Williwaw said:
Thanks for the great info.

I may be screwing up here but I make that Tenex at 0.148 inches and Match is 0.187. I have shot and digitized 600 F Class SBR 50 yard targets. Thus I have 600 SD values for 40 shot samples of various SK and Lapua(Cx and Biathlon X). At a glance in my black book the vast majority of the SK beats the Match and a good bit of it beats the Tenex.

If I'm not misunderstanding something here I'd have to say my Vudoo repeater is pretty happy with the SK. I'm shooting outdoors with flags in all temps and conditions. My low temp cutoff is somewhere in the -15 to -18C range. That may sound extreme but it has its rewards. Last week I laid in the snow for 2.5 hours in while it lightly rained but it was dead still. I did three days worth of testing in a day and had three wolves walk by, passing within 25 yards after I had put 70 rounds down range. Go figure ... I guess they are used to me being out there.
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I'm going to guess and say these are Eley's acceptable figures for what they get with the same four test barrels that they use to get the average velocities listed on the boxes. If I'm not mistaken, these are actions screwed down into big metal vise blocks that get clamped in a vise. These vises are on big, heavy pedestals. Nothing can move. With the actions in such vises they do not have to worry about the guns moving during testing. Everything is always in exactly the same spot pointing in exactly the same direction. This makes testing very simple as it does not rely on the shooter in any way. You're just a meat machine loading ammunition and pulling the trigger, and you contribute nothing else to the equation as a result. That setup is great for that purpose. However, those guns will shoot better in an actual stock under shooting circumstances in which you and I would actually shoot them. So Eley's acceptable group radius figures are good for comparing against themselves, but they do not tell you how your gun will shoot. Take your gun and put it in such a fixture, clamped into such a vise, and shoot it like that and it will more than likely shoot worse than it ever has while you've been shooting it normally. So they aren't figures that anyone should expect to see in their guns, but rather they are just Eley's own expectations from the testing scenario. Good for comparing Sport to Club to Match and seeing if the relative difference should be good enough for whatever need you're trying to fill.

edit: Oh, and there are a few rounds missing from the list, but for some reason Eley lists a different value for some of them. And off the top of my head I couldn't even figure out what that other figure meant. A few of the other rounds listed something they called Max MG. I didn't see anything in the brochure explaining what that might be. I sent Eley a message asking what it means.

edit: Eley's answer: MG is mean group size
 
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For the general reader, the manufacturers may publish information relating to ammo performance standards, but they are never a guarantee about how the ammo will perform, or how it will shoot in any particular rifle.

For example, RWS offers this easy to appreciate visual depiction relating to the performance standards of some of its grades of ammo.

Note that performance varies by lot, even among the top tier varieties. This goes for all .22LR match and entry level match ammo.

It's also worth noting that not all rifles -- even those with top name brand barrels -- will be able to shoot 9mm outside-to-outside ten shot groups at 50 meters with RWS R50.


 
good chart, tfp
reflected in prices I've seen
each roughly, target rifle @$.16 , rifle match @$.24 , special match @$.32 , cdn

shows no flyers or outliers in the target rifle
 
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boxhitch said:
shows no flyers or outliers in the target rifle .....hhmmm
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These were likely shot with a barrelled action clamped tightly in a vise, which eliminates shooter and equipment induced error. When literally nothing can move it is different than if you can yank on the trigger a bit and move the whole rifle, or some weirdness in your rest/bags exists when it tries to track in them during shots, or you're using a bipod, or, or... However, the 10-shot group is nearly 3x the size, and were you to cut that shot count in half you'd be more likely to see any outliers in a 5-shot group. The more you shoot, the more it hides those outliers in the larger group, and eventually they're just part of the larger noise pool.
 
_Shorty said:
The more you shoot, the more it hides those outliers in the larger group, and eventually they're just part of the larger noise pool.
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Shorty is right. When there's a greater number of shots, the overall size of the group contains a better picture of what "noise" can conceal, including many potential "flyers".

Below are 50 rounds at 100 with a random lot of SK Rifle Match and the results may be considered better than expected for this ammo. (The dimensions include the two "flyers" in the group.)

If any five rounds were picked at random out of the box (which usually doesn't happen in practice), there are a great number of five-shot combinations possible within the pattern, apparently over 2,118,000 of them. Some could be as large as the dimensions shown. With the right five or ten rounds, the group could be extraordinarily small. Of course the odds of selecting those particular rounds are not worth betting on.


 
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