The Glamorgan County Championships were held today at St David's College in Cardiff. I shot in the afternoon session which was a good thing - our kids kept us up all night long so I was absolutely worn out in the morning!
It was a FITA 18 round, and I shot quite well for most of the day, dropping one 8 but the rest were in the gold. I finished on 568 around my usual kind of score which saw me take the bronze medal in 3rd place. I was chuffed with the result, and my club Pentref Bowmen also took the compound team trophy!
This was the last indoor shoot on my calendar, and a good result to round off the season! Now its time to look forwards to the Field season. I've been looking forward to going back outdoors, shooting in sports halls for so long with no field shoots on drives me crazy!
I've got a half holiday booked on Wednesday, so I am meeting my friend Chris and we're off up the club for the full afternoon to get everything sorted out. I have switched rests over tonight and set it up where it was before tweaking it for indoors, so it should be a nice easy transition. I just need to paper-tune to make sure the arrows are coming out straight, walkback to check centreshot and then make sure my marks are accurate.
I am trying a few new things out with my outdoor setup this season to try and chase down those few extra points and get my Grand Bow Master 530 score. One of them is the rest, I have ditched my usual .010 spring steel blade and I'm trying out the LaunchTec blades out. They are an epoxy-composite material instead of steel and offer a lot of advantages - they don't rust/snap, they recover faster and don't 'chatter' on the draw, they are smoother and kinder to arrows and my personal fave that sold it for me - they don't bend. I've caught my rest before and bent it and its a bloody nightmare getting everything back in line where it was. I stress tested these blades including pushing one to destruction and they are bloody tough. I can bend it right down to the arrow shelf, let go and it springs immediately back to position with no set or deformity - I wouldn't even attempt that with a steel blade, so fingers crossed this will be more consistent and nicer to shoot with.
The other thing is a few minor changes to my arrows. I use Easton Navigator FMJ's outdoors and they are a heavy arrow but I like them, heavy and skinny - they cut through wind and fly well but I only have 100 grain points in them so the FOC was quite low at just under 8%. Maya is a speed bow, so a little extra weight isn't an issue so I switched the points out for 120gn which increased the foc to almost 10%. This should get a bit more 'ballistic' arrow flight and more accuracy at longer range. I also changed fletches, switching my usual AAE Plastifletch Max for Flex Fletch shields. They are a bit lighter, but also slightly larger so I should get a bit more steering effect from them. I also moved them forwards slightly to improve face clearance.
They look good in my usual colours too, blue fletches and nocks on new white wraps...
So there we are, the arrows are ready and the bow is ready to be fine tuned to them. I shot the arrows across a chrono to check the speed and they have only slowed slightly from the extra weight in the points, coming out at 256fps where they were 261 before. Not much change, but the longer marks will change so I have generated new sight tapes from Archers Advantage and will print these off to try and make sure they are good as I can get them.
The first field shoot on my calendar is in exactly 3 weeks, a Marked Forrester round at Fomon, followed a week later by the Pentref March shoot & Glamorgan Field Championships, so it will be a good test to see if the changes have made any difference.
Fingers crossed!!
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