New toy!

Ahhh the end of the indoor season is in sight! Only 2 more to go now, the FITA Welsh Senior Championships and the Glamorgan County Championships in the coming weekends.

It’s about this time of year that I start getting cabin fever and can’t wait to get back outside. I’m a Field archer, not a Target one. I miss shooting in forests and up and down slopes and I’m itching to set my bow back up for outdoors. I’ve made some tweaks to my arrows to try and chase down a little more accuracy (different fletches in a new position, slightly heavier points) and can’t wait to try them out.

That’s one of the things that I hate at this time of year, changing setups. It's a pain changing rest positions, retuning for best arrow flight between skinny outdoor arrows and huge heavy indoor ones, and i've missed a few shoots because my main bow isn't set up for long distance, so I made the decision to pick up a dedicated bow for indoor target. Something with conventional solid limbs, a very tall axle to axle and nice and simple config. Being a Bowtech fan, I went looking at their past Target bow options and managed to bag an excellent second hand deal…

Allow me to introduce Kiara, my new (to me anyway!) Bowtech Brigadier in testarossa (matt black, metallic red cams)

It arrived last week and it needed a fair bit of work out of the box. I borrowed an arrow rest to try it out, and it felt bloody awful to shoot. It flopped like a jelly bow and didnt feel right so I gave it a full check over and found that it was set up totally out of spec.

It was over ½” too long ATA (close to 41”, should be 40 3/16ths”) , the cables had no twists in them and were poorly made with uneven tension and the string only had about 1 twist in it. The previous owner said it was set at 55lb for me but it was almost 10lb below this, which is below the limbs safety rating (they should be shot no lower than 50) and because it was long-strung the valley felt like 90%+ let off, the string was actually starting to go slack before the cams bit which is dangerous as the cams can lock up or the bow might derail (blow up!) trying to get it to wind down.

I made a new set of cables for it myself to Bowtech’s spec, fitted them and synchronised the cams while twisting up the string to the correct length. The limbs needed a few turns and it is now at 55lb and feels much better. It only has one draw stop on it and in the correct hole, the letoff is quite high which made the wall feel a bit spongy so I have advanced it one notch whch has it down to about a 60-70% letoff I would estimate and it feels a lot sharper. I also cut about 1/2" off the carbon stringstop so it can be pushed further into the bow, and fitted my spare BowJax stringstop enhancer over the worn stock one to improve its effectiveness.

 

I've ordered an arrow rest and a V bar so that I can fit my spare stabilisers, and start shooting arrows off it to get used to it and see how it performs. I can’t afford a sight/scope for it yet or a proper case but this isn’t going to be needed for another 8-9 months so I have plenty of time to pick up the parts and get her set up ready for next year’s indoor season.