Anyone ever Ransom Rest Eley in any of the economical varieties?

How do the orange or yellow box varieties group at 50 yards?  How do they compare to black box?
If you had any reliability issues that you can attribute to ammunition rather than your gun, I'd be grateful for that input as well.
I just received my 41 back from Clark with their barrel and a 50 yd test target (one hole) but it was with black box which I can not sustain for an entire season and simultaneously feed myself.  I already know what CCI SV will do.  I'm curious about the more affordable Eley grades. 
Ed

Eley, by its own admission, makes two types of ammo. High accuracy and high volume based on expected market. The high accuracy line starts at about “Club” “Match” and “Tenex” are selected from “Club” lots “Target is from degraded “Club”….

So using that as a guide, I’d opt for a different approach…. First it try some Eley Bullseye Pistol X, “Target”, and “Club”. See which one your gun likes and make sure you have 100% function. I wouldn’t bother with “Match” or “Tenex” until you’re shooting Master level scores.

Bullseye pistol X has a limited distribution. https://www.pardiniguns.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=1953

In my case, I bought some boxes of Federal AutoMatch and a case of Fiocchi 40gr Subsonic HP so I train with that, and CCI SV. I’ll shoot a club match with CCI, a regional I break out the Norma Match, at the nationals, I’d take the best shooting most reliable ammunition I had.

I RR tested a dozen different target grade ammos in my Pardini.  My best grouping was with Lapua Pistol King.  The differences between Eley Tenex and Club were not very much.

Get a box of the Black Box that Clark used and test it yourself.  If it is really good, then ante up for a brick of it and use it only at matches and only at 50 yds.  That way it will last quite a while; almost anything that is reliable is good enough at 25 yds.

I actually took three Hammerli pistols to the Eley Customer Range in the UK and batch tested TENEX.  I took with me Federal 711 and CCI Standard Velocity to compare.  The most important takeaway was that every barrel is unique, and so is every batch of ammunition.  There was absolutely no correlation barrel to barrel and batch to batch of ammunition.  Each barrel had a lot of TENEX that was clearly best, and ALL the ammunition I tested, including Federal and CCI, would hold 10 Ring groups at 50 meters (the length of the Customer Range).  Each barrel would shoot X-Ring groups with the best matched lot of ammunition.  So testing ammunition from one lot in one barrel tells you how that lot of ammunition performs in that specific barrel.  Extrapolating out from there is pointless.

  As previously noted, all the ammunition from the premium line is supposed to be TENEX.  The procedure there is to make a batch of ammunition, test it on the Proof Range, and then label it according to how it performs.  At the Customer Range only TENEX is available for lot testing. 

  The best part of the trip was getting to know the Chief Range Officer of the Customer Range, Bert Brookes.  He traveled with me to Camp Perry for the next eight years.  Sadly, he passed away in 2008.

Road trip! (Winters, TX)

https://eley.co.uk/united-states-of-america-test-range/

inthebeech wrote:How do the orange or yellow box varieties group at 50 yards?  How do they compare to black box?
If you had any reliability issues that you can attribute to ammunition rather than your gun, I'd be grateful for that input as well.
I just received my 41 back from Clark with their barrel and a 50 yd test target (one hole) but it was with black box which I can not sustain for an entire season and simultaneously feed myself.  I already know what CCI SV will do.  I'm curious about the more affordable Eley grades. 
Ed

About seven years ago I sent my 1978 5.5" heavy S&W M41 barrel to Alex Hamilton (10 Ring Precision, Inc.) to be relined, partially due to the pistol being very unreliable at the time and a friend who was on the USAMU team saying he liked the 5.5" at that time but it did not meet the performance standards for the Army team.

Another friend and I tested the barrel with several types of moderate priced 22LR ammo in a Ransom Rest clamped to a very heavy wood rifle bench. We shot 30 shot groups at 50 yards to see worst performance in a match and included all first shots from lock-back. Below is 2016 CCI SV with the ink circle being an X ring on a NRA B-6 target. In testing RWS Target Rifle did worse than CCI SV with a few flyers outside the X ring.  Eley Target did about the same or slightly better than the CCI SV. Eley Club did better with more of the middle of the X ring hit. Wolf Match Target did the best but did not function the pistol well. The Eley Target had a few cycling issues too if I remember correctly, or I just wanted to standardize what I had on hand.

So, I run CCI SV for practice and club matches, I sold the Eley Target to a friend, I save the Eley Club for big matches. I still have a few bricks of the Wolf Match Target.

IMHO, and speaking from my own personal experience on the BE Classification road (well traveled)…..shoot any reasonably priced ammo that groups relatively well in your gun. Then focus on trigger break and sight picture….and forget the ammo.
The gains one makes in developing skills pays far greater dividends than any high priced ammo ever will (especially in our sport). Maybe one will notice the difference at HM, but probably not…..my 2 cents.
Shooting Norma TAC22 presently cause it’s available and cheap….and never felt it was a handicap or keeping me from shooting at my classification level. Bracing for the onslaught…..

Tony, you are absolutely correct! Too many shooters going down rabbit holes instead of learning how to pull a trigger.
Jon

[quote="Wobbley"]Eley, by its own admission, makes two types of ammo.  High accuracy and high volume based on expected market.  The high accuracy line starts at about “Club”   “Match” and “Tenex” are selected from “Club” lots “Target is from degraded “Club”….[/quote]
This is interesting.  Thanks.

ELEY makes a variety of grades of ammunition as well as ammunition for different disciplines.  Though best known for the iconic Tenex, which has won more than twice the international medals as all competing brands combined, ELEY also produces ammo for recreational and hunting.  

The ELEY brochure will give you a good overview of the brand as well as some specific accuracy standards for the line.  You can access the online version at https://www.eleyammunition.com/brochure/  If you have further questions, ELEY also has data sheets with some expanded information.

Late last year my buddy and I were at the range RR testing a 45 Jon Eulette had built for him at 50 yards.  After he was done we started talking about 22s.  We both had Nelson conversions with us and put one on his 45 and tested with that bulk CMP white box stuff made by Eley they sold a few years ago for about 325 a case.  It shot a 0.8 inch group.

My 

TonyH wrote:IMHO, and speaking from my own personal experience on the BE Classification road (well traveled)…..shoot any reasonably priced ammo that groups relatively well in your gun. Then focus on trigger break and sight picture….and forget the ammo.
The gains one makes in developing skills pays far greater dividends than any high priced ammo ever will (especially in our sport). Maybe one will notice the difference at HM, but probably not…..my 2 cents.
Shooting Norma TAC22 presently cause it’s available and cheap….and never felt it was a handicap or keeping me from shooting at my classification level. Bracing for the onslaught…..

I could never believe how well that cheap Blazer ammo shot when you repackaged it in those HM Tenex boxes! 

Bill Demarest shot a Free Pistol World Record (Qualification + Finals) and when he later tested the lot of Fiocchi that he used, it was the worst-grouping lot of everything he tested.

Yes, an anecdote is not data, but it is a fun anecdote.

james r chapman wrote:My 

TonyH wrote:IMHO, and speaking from my own personal experience on the BE Classification road (well traveled)…..shoot any reasonably priced ammo that groups relatively well in your gun. Then focus on trigger break and sight picture….and forget the ammo.
The gains one makes in developing skills pays far greater dividends than any high priced ammo ever will (especially in our sport). Maybe one will notice the difference at HM, but probably not…..my 2 cents.
Shooting Norma TAC22 presently cause it’s available and cheap….and never felt it was a handicap or keeping me from shooting at my classification level. Bracing for the onslaught…..

I could never believe how well that cheap Blazer ammo shot when you repackaged it in those HM Tenex boxes! 

That wasn’t Blazer…it was $1.89/box Tenex!! And it shot just as well!

I did ransom rest testing of some different sorts of ammo through my Pardini SP at 50 yards. Here's the processed data. My takeaways were that CCI SV, Eley Club, and Eley Pistol X were statistically indistinguishable out of my gun and setup on that day. CCI SV had two failures to feed because of known issues where some Pardini magazines are too short to handle it. Not a big deal, I'll just use my CCI SV in another gun. 

I used units of MoA, or Minutes of Angle. To convert to inches at 50 yards, multiply by 0.5 inches. So for Eley Pistol X, your R95 is 1.26" radius at 50 yards. "R95" is the radius within which 95% of your shots will fall, given the observed characteristics of your grouping. It can be computed using a standard deviation. The program I used for processing my target images was TARAN, which I cannot recommend highly enough. For reference, the X ring at 50 yards has a radius of about 0.85", and the 10 ring is radius about 1.7". 

Interesting to note is that even the worst ammo I tested, Norma Tac-22, would still hold a R95 of about 1.5", plenty good enough to shoot 100 on the slow line. 

Name	Num Shots	Standard deviation (MoA)	R95 (MoA)	Certainty P=0.05
CCI SV	48	1.01	1.3	“-12% + 16%”
Aguila Super Extra Standard Velocity	50	1.17	2.87	“-12% + 16%”
Eley Club	50	0.92	2.24	“-12% + 16%”
Norma Tac-22	15	1.21	2.96	“-21% + 35%”
Eley Pistol X	50	1.02	2.51	“-12% + 16%”

only_8_ring wrote:I did ransom rest testing of some different sorts of ammo through my Pardini SP at 50 yards. Here's the processed data. My takeaways were that CCI SV, Eley Club, and Eley Pistol X were statistically indistinguishable out of my gun and setup on that day. CCI SV had two failures to feed because of known issues where some Pardini magazines are too short to handle it. Not a big deal, I'll just use my CCI SV in another gun. 

I used units of MoA, or Minutes of Angle. To convert to inches at 50 yards, multiply by 0.5 inches. So for Eley Pistol X, your R95 is 1.26" radius at 50 yards. "R95" is the radius within which 95% of your shots will fall, given the observed characteristics of your grouping. It can be computed using a standard deviation. The program I used for processing my target images was TARAN, which I cannot recommend highly enough. For reference, the X ring at 50 yards has a radius of about 0.85", and the 10 ring is radius about 1.7". 

Interesting to note is that even the worst ammo I tested, Norma Tac-22, would still hold a R95 of about 1.5", plenty good enough to shoot 100 on the slow line. 



 

Name	Num Shots	Standard deviation (MoA)	R95 (MoA)	Certainty P=0.05
CCI SV	48	1.01	1.3	“-12% + 16%”
Aguila Super Extra Standard Velocity	50	1.17	2.87	“-12% + 16%”
Eley Club	50	0.92	2.24	“-12% + 16%”
Norma Tac-22	15	1.21	2.96	“-21% + 35%”
Eley Pistol X	50	1.02	2.51	“-12% + 16%”

 Nice data and my point exactly! Ammo don’t matter so much, the jerk behind the trigger does. The worst ammo in that particular firearm will give you a 100% on the slow line..only takes 97% to make High Master.
More time behind the trigger…..

My personal rule of thumb for new shooters trying to "buy more points": A trigger job is almost always worth it if you don't like your trigger. But...
If you're still shooting 7s in a match, a new gun cannot help you. 
If you're still shooting 8s in a match, ammo lot and ransom rest testing cannot help you. Neither will trying to optimize your load to 0.01 grains of powder or your overall round length, sorting your bullets into bins by weight, using never-fired Starline brass blessed with the tears of a virgin under a blue moon, or primers forged in the Hall of the Mountain King.

What is worth improving as a shooter are things that will make you get a 0 in a match. These things include ammo that doesn't go off (looking at you, Golden Bullet and other bulk .22 buckets) and making sure your ammo will cycle and feed in your gun properly.

Only 8: Your data should be amenable to comparison of means for statistical significance, using test like ANOVA (analysis of variance).  If you have it in spreadsheet format I can do the test. If you like just PM me with the sheet attached. Radial distance from center (mm, MOA, etc) would work.

JHHolliday: I have images of my targets but did not bother saving the X/Y or radial or other intermediate data. Sorry.

only_8_ring wrote:JHHolliday: I have images of my targets but did not bother saving the X/Y or radial or other intermediate data. Sorry.

 Ok.  The offer stands for others if you have good measurement data on POI / ammo testing