Welsh Field Masters Tour - Round 2

Round 2 of the Welsh Field Masters Tour this year was hosted by Red Kite Field Archers at their course in Broak Oaks, Carmarthenshire which has a reputation for being a difficult course and it didn’t fail to live up to expectations!

It was a really nice day, sunny and warm with clear skies but as always on that course, there was a harsh wind on the top half of the course where all the long shots are. It is due to the landscape channeling the wind. On the lower half of course near the clubhouse it is dead calm, not a breath of wind but up on the ridge it is very windy and hard to hold on target, quite often blowing you off the target entirely.

I had a bit of a slow start as I couldn’t seem to settle but I soon leveled out and I was putting in mostly 19’s and 18’s. The first half was a little bit low because of this but the second half picked up with some better shots. Everything was going ok until the penultimate target…

Target 14 is a 2 peg walkup, 2 arrows at 23 yards and 2 at 20 on a fairly steep uphill angle. On the first half I scored 19 points with only one out of the spot. On the second time around, I put in a 4 4 4 miss, shooting my final arrow at the wrong target face! Only scoring 12 for that target dropped my half considerably. The final target was the 15/14 yard walkup which I scored all X’s on so recovered well but too late – damage done.

I finished on a 513 in joint second place which was still a decent result. If I hadn’t messed up that target it would have been close to 520 which is about my average for that course but I wasn’t very happy with my shooting. It felt inconsistent so I need to do some work on shot execution and I am still not 100% with my marks at long range. 

What I need is access to a long flat field to get accurate long distance marks, and some targets on slopes where I can test them. The problem is our club only has 50 yards flat and we cannot leave practice targets out due to vandalism so setting up for practice on the slopes is difficult. I am going to find a way to sort it out in the coming weeks, probably at a Target club that has open space to check my long marks ready for the next shoot.

The next one is a classification round at March Hare, over the English border in Throckmorton in 4 weeks time. Bit of a drive (2.5hrs) but it is an almost flat course so it is a good place to test gear out without having to worry about slopes and angles etc. It is also 2 weeks before the Welsh Open so a final chance to practice.

New Darts!

I’ve been really lazy and haven’t updated my blog for a long time, so I think an update is long overdue!

Well the indoor season has come to a close and the Field season is upon us again (at last!). I have been tempted for some time to change my arrows and after my last indoor target shoot, I had a 3 week gap before my first Field shoot so used the time to set up some new arrows ready for the 2014 field season.

After lots of research it came down to a choice between Easton X10-ProTour’s or Carbon Express Nano-XR’s. The Nano’s seemed to be the favorite they are highly spoken of by several professionals that I know and trust. One of my friends has a set in pretty much the spec I would need and let me try them. Shooting 6 of my arrows and 6 of his at the same spot at 30, 40 and 50 yards – in each case I shot nice groups, but the Nano’s were all inside my C1’s closer to the centre so that sealed it. I spent the money and ordered them – for £300 a dozen they had better live up to the hype!

New Nano XR's dressed up with name labels by ArrowSocks.

I set them up in my usual colours and with some shockingly pink custom name labels courtesy of Arrow Socks and got to work tuning them. After weight matching the components and assembling, the all up weight is 375 grains – only 5 grains heavier than my Carbon One’s and the weight spread is less than a grain across the whole set. The spine testing was far more consistent than any other set of arrows I have ever checked and I was very impressed with the quality. 

I shot them for a while to tune for groups and adjusted the bow’s draw weight until they spined in perfectly and grouped the best. They act slightly stiffer than the C1’s at the same spine and the bow is set a shade over 57lb to get them to fly perfectly, about 1lb more than usual. At the same time as setting this I also took the opportunity to do a full retune – yoke, tiller, creep you name it and the bow is shooting like a dream.

Grouping at 45 yards after a bit of fine tuning!

During the testing and setup I managed to take out 7 of the 12 arrows by killing nock pins, shooting through fletches etc so they are obviously grouping very well and consistently! I’m going to have to shoot separate spots closer than 30 yards with these!

I didn’t have access to a chrono so used Archers Advantage which calculated the arrow speed at 280fps, and after initial testing this looked more or less correct so I printed off sight tapes and rocked up to my first competition using them – round 1 of the Welsh Field Masters Tour, a marked animal round at Fonmon Castle. My personal best on this round is 558/560 so I was hoping to at least equal this or maybe clean the round with a 560 but it wasn’t to be.

A few targets in, I snatched a shot to the right on a 35 yard target that was very narrow, dropping into the wound area and losing 2 points so I was on for a 558 but then I had issues with the 2 x 60 yard targets. Both went in low in the same spot, indicating that my marks are wrong at longer distances. Because of this I finished on 554/560 and in 2^nd place which I was still very pleased with for their first outing.

I managed to borrow a chrono off a buddy at the club and on checking, found that my bow was actually shooting closer to 275 so 5fps slower than expected. I printed off the marks at this revised speed and compared them to the ones on the bow. There was a slight difference but at long distance it adds up, making a 3 yard low difference at 60 yards which explains the low shots at 60. If there had been an 80 yard shot on that day it may well have been a miss!

These marks have been fitted and tested and so far everything seems to match up. I have shot distances from 15 back to 50 yards with them, and they look to be correct so it’s ready for the next outing! The next tournament is this weekend, round 2 of the Field Masters – a Hunter round at Red Kite. That course is quite challenging with some particularly exposed shots that always seem to be windy even on nice days because of the landscape. It is not a high scoring course but it will be a very good test of how these arrows perform and I am looking forward to it.

Check back in a week for the post-shoot report to see how it went!