Leupold, S&B , and few others...

[AdminMASTER]

I chatted with:

1) KAHLES - Silver anodised will be available - as confirmed by Peter Aichberger - showed me the Matt designed reticle...

2) Vici Peters of Leupold - great lady & wants to know more about the Leupold FT they used to make & discontinued..ie: send her all the info., as they will look into it regarding a production - since Kahles K1050 , S&B FTII, Sightron SIII , March - I made the case It was not beyond Leupold's ability to give it a go ...she was amenable to my persuasion (I hope !) since those are products in a certain premium price range (as compared to their only 2 current "air rifle" scopes) AND that there is cross over potential - ie: F class and or Benchrest for powder burners...but either upto 100m or 300m (like Kahles) ; so Vici will speak to their engineers

3) Karen at S&B - and heard the FTII was co-developped with Adam Benke ....and I mentioned, no offense to Adam - they should have sought feedback from a host of UK (& Irish FT shooters) instead - Mmm...her facial expression twitched a bit

4) Chris Sauerbrei of DOCTER - and explained that Hunting scopes...great...but if you want to consider a new product for another market - FT (which he never heard of ) ie: Parrallax at 8m /10m and upto whatever ...and cited S&B FTII, March, Kahles K1050 and encouraged they should give it a go as well...Hope that gets them thinking & start prototyping

5) Vixen - are willing to reparallax (all made in Japan scopes) by German agent - Helge Gottschalk ; so lets see...if they can do something..

[Sirius]

( Quote)Karen at S&B - and heard the FTII was co-developped with Adam Benke ....and I mentioned, no offense to Adam - they should have sought feedback from a host of UK shooters,

They did get feedback from a UK shooter but in typical German fashion they chose to ignore. Wonder how many of these scopes get returned out of the ones they manage to sell .

[Matt]

Not sure they have ignored UK shooters on the FT2....


Matt

[AdminMASTER]

Not sure they have ignored UK shooters on the FT2....


Matt

The hard sell was: "...developped in close co-operation with German FT shooters...blah blah ..Adam Benke worked closely with me...blah blah..."

I smiled....mentioned the BEST shooters are UK/Irish (Conor ) and she...kept quiet...and gave a "lips sealed" look - none of your names were mentioned by her...but I named names, which she recognised. Did she expand and give UK shooters credit ? - Nope.

So what is the story then Matt ? who in the UK worked on the FT II ? and to what extent ? or does a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) prevent - if I assume you tested/worked with them ?

Just curious as anyone else

[Matt]

I am not sure what I can say or can't.

The original guy who worked on the scope was another german FT shooter, Benke was given the scope as far as I am aware once the first prototypes were developed.

The scopes that came to the UK were from the first "Production" run - I have no info on how big this production run is, though I believe it is small. I passed one scope onto a UK shooter to test at the begining of the winter I think and was asked if I knew of Mark Cammocio and if I would recommend him to review a scope in the magazines, to which my reply was yes as he was a previous top FT shooter.

During testing all feedback was passed back to Schmidt, I couldn't get involved with anything to do with the scope as I have been helping with the Kahles. When the scope was passed back to me, after testing, I borrowed a set of mounts from Jon Harris to test the scope myself to confirm all the points raised by the tester - I agreed on most of them.

As to the next step with Schmidt I cannot say but it does involve UK shooters if they want to be involved...

regards,

Matt

P.S. For those thinking it's all about free kit, it aint, there is a lot of work that needs to go into testing the kit and even after all the testing is undertaken there is no guarrentee the end product will match the results of the pre-production tests.

[AdminMASTER]

Thanks for clarifying Matt...

3 points

1. If UK shooters involved - great - that would mean proper FT input from you guys

2. If no acknowledgement forth coming from S&B - from a "transparent" share of info. what went into the FTII- it could suggest - they didnt acknowledge or accept those UK recommendations - in which case- they wouldnt want to mention the UK feedback or involvement (and quietly binned the UK concerns or pointers).

3. So then plausibly... officially their story was/is - "we got German FT shooters feedback & worked closely with German top shooters" (when we all know - they are not amongst the best with regards to experience unlike the Brits. and where numbers , outnumber the German FT shooters , like 100 to 1 ?)


If that were true, it would suck S&B didnt learn from 1st cock up...and should have "co-ordinated" solely with the top UK shooter(s) - as common sense dictates - tha's your largest & potentially most important $ market.

S&B FT II ? mmm...I'll pass & wait for the 1st review from someone when they post their feedback.

Khales K1050 ? - yes, all the way , coz u were involved with them 1000% Matt..

[Matt]

I think it's doing S&B a disservice by saying that.

It makes sense to use local countrymen to develop a scope, one of the biggest issues with working with Kahles for example when a scope is sent out it takes around a week to turn up, I then test the following weekend report issues if found or test another weekend and report issues the development team then make changes and either a new scope gets sent out or the current scope is sent back and changes made and then sent back... repeat this process 10 or 15 times... If I had been based in Austria the scope may have been out last year.

Any german company tends to favour home grown people / other companies over any other countries it's the same in America.

I think many people did complain to the company after the debacle of the first, but did they present themselves in the correct way? I don't know if they did or did not?

With regards the Kahles comment, they have wanted to work with shooters and listen to shooters which is good, but ultimately the scope will not suit everybody, it suits me.

regards,

Matt

P.S. At least FT shooters were involved with the FT2 what about the FTP how many top shooters, shoot for their teams and how many were consulted over the the new rifle?

[AdminMASTER]

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