Going indoors..

Once all of the field shoots were over it was time to go indoors, and enter the local indoor Target shoots. I had a bit of a break in October and used the time to set up the Brigadier and get used to it, but I wasn’t 100% with the way it was shooting. It’s a good bow, but I just don’t seem to be getting on with it and haven’t shot any particularly high scores with it.

I shot a local FITA 18 with it and came in joint 2^nd place with it, but didn’t enjoy myself and  still didn’t have much confidence in it. The next shoot was the big one – the Indoor Nationals in Coventry so I made some final changes and took the Brigadier with me as that’s what I bought it for after all.

I travelled up to the shoot with my friend Chris and we were on adjacent targets all day so had good company for the day. The shoot was well organized and it is a fantastic venue to shoot at, with a huge hall full of targets each side and a trade show down the centre. My sponsors, Wales Archery Specialists had a large display so I spent some time (and money!) with them.

 

The shoot went alright, but I am sad to say that the Brigadier didn’t really perform for me. There were a few bad shots, and it felt like a struggle towards the end – partly because I had lost confidence in this bow early on and wasn’t enjoying shooting it. I finished up on 560 points which is below my average and to be honest, I was lucky to get that much.  I didn’t make the cut for the shoot off’s so we packed up and headed home, after a much needed food stop for a consolation Burger King!

 

Been a while - time for an update!

Hi everybody!

It’s been a few months since I updated my blog and there have been a fair few shoots and events in the gap with some great results, so I’ll summarize the events of the last few months quickly so we can get back on track!

Following on from the last post, the next shoot was the Welsh Field Masters Tour – round 5 at Dinefwr archers. This was shot on the 22^nd of September and for a change, the weather was actually quite kind to us! It was quite bright with hardly any wind so some pretty good scores were submitted. I finished on a 529 and took first place, coming away with the gold medal.

 A few weeks after this we had the WFAA AGM meeting where the awards for the last year were presented, and due to my scores I won the WFAA Field Masters Tour for 2013 – taking the title for 2 years in a row! I was absolutely thrilled with this result as it was a close game all the way. Fingers crossed I can keep it up and take the title next year to make it a hat trick!

The next shoot after this was the final field shoot on my calendar before the indoor season began in earnest, the Welsh FITA Field Championships hosted by my own club, Pentref Bowmen. This was a 2 day FITA shoot, unmarked on day 1 and marked on day 2. We had a little bit of a rain and wind to contend with, but nothing too serious and I put in some fairly good scores and had some cracking targets.

35m - stacked on the spider!

 

 When the results were compiled, we had the award ceremony and it turns out that this year.. I won!  I was the 2^nd highest overall so had a silver medal for the open, and I was the highest scoring Welsh compound archer so I won the gold medal and the Welsh Championships Trophy!

 

  I’ve never won anything before at the FITA Welsh as the competition is tight, so to say I was thrilled with this result is a bit of an understatement haha! The trophy has pride of place on the bookshelves at home and looks very good next to the medal & memento board. I need to work hard to defend it next year!

 

  

 

Chippenham Archers Mixed FITA, and testing the Brigadier

Hi everybody! It’s been a little while since the last update so here it is. The last competition I shot was a mixed FITA round at Chippenham Archers on the 8^th of September.

I don’t shoot a lot of FITA rounds so it would be a nice change of pace, and as it was a mixed round there are 12 unmarked targets which will be good practice for the unmarked round of the FITA Welsh Championships at the end of the month.  It would also be a good opportunity to test out the new Bohning Blazer nocks that I have switched to.

A few of us from my club went down there and I was very impressed with Chippenham Archer’s facilities. They have storage units for all their equipment and toilet facilities, right next to a 150 yard field for target archery and their field course in the woods that border it – a very versatile location!

As their field course is only 12 targets, we shot 12 unmarked targets and when we broke for dinner, the work party went out to make some adjustments and put out the marked pegs. This was a little unusual but it was a small shoot and it was turned around quickly.

In the morning I shot an unmarked half of 191 which I was very happy with, but I dropped a few points in the afternoon finishing on 183 for a final score of 374. I am convinced that some of the targets were further away than stated as I know my marks are accurate, but on everything further than about 40m everything went low. 

On the 50m target I put in a tight group at the bottom edge of the spot with some out which equates to about a 2m error. On my way around the course then I bumped into a friend who said he noticed that the long targets are all out by 2-3m himself. When I got to the 55m target I checked and all of the arrow holes in the face were low so I overcooked it by 3m shooting it on my 58m mark and scored a 6/5/5 all in.

You are not allowed to carry electronic devices on FITA rounds so I did not have my rangefinder with me, but I wish I had so I could have verified the distances. For 2 of us to both notice that the targets are longer than stated would suggest a measuring issue and not our sight marks are at fault.

Even so, my shooting was consistent and I cleaned up on the closer targets and finished in first place, narrowly scraping through by 4 points so it was a close one! 

I was really happy with how the bow performed after making the tiller adjustments and resetting the timing, it sounds normal again now and was nice and stable to shoot so I am confident it is set up properly, and any misses or fliers are because of the person pulling the string! My next field shoot now is the final of the Welsh Masters on the 22^nd in a few days time which I am ahead on the leader board for so fingers crossed! 

Now that I know the Insanity is set up properly I took the opportunity to shoot the Brigadier now that it’s ready.  I shot a few arrows through it to settle everything down and checked the draw weight. I cranked it up to 55lb what I normally shoot, but this bow feels better to shoot and follows through nicer a few pounds less, so I set it to about 53.5.

As this draw weight the draw cycle is smoother and the shot feels clean, not so harsh. I am using 2314’s with 190gn points as well which may be slightly too weak for 55lb anyway and they seem to come out of the bow cleaner at this weight. It’s only ever going to be shot at 18m/20 yards anyway so that draw weight is more than enough.

It only took a few adjustments and it was shooting well in no time, nailing 5X ends on the IFAA indoor face and once set I didn’t put a single arrow out of the spot so I think we have a good indoor bow on our hands! She still needs some work around stabilisation/balance, and the peep is also rotating but not by much. I will continue twisting the peep every shot to try and ‘train’ it into staying straight as you can do, but if it doesn’t settle within the next few sessions I will just add/remove a twist to the string to settle it.

The only thing I am undecided on it what to do about the arrow rest. I originally had my Trophy Taker 1 on it with a wide Launchtec blade but this is so wide it is causing fletch contact. I have popped my TT2 rest from the Guardian on it for now and fitted my spare Launchtec 2 hole narrow blade and this is shooting well, but these are quite heavy arrows and the blade is sagging a bit.  For now I have put my .014 narrow steel blade on it and will test it with that the next time I shoot it, and see how it performs.

Field Masters Round 4

Hi everybody!

Sunday the 18th of August was round 4 of the Welsh Field Masters Tour, and this one was a Hunter round at Fonmon. The weather forecast wasn’t too bad, but it had rained for 2 solid days before the shoot and North course at Fonmon is slippery at the best of times, so it was going to be tricky!

We arrived and got signed in/set up in good time, I verified my marks were good and then we went out in our groups onto the course. As expected the course was very slippery,  I almost went over a few times and a few people had a hard landing sliding down the slopes!

All was going well until we reached the bottom part of the course which is under heavy tree cover. The lighting was terrible, and it was very hard to see the targets through the scope. A few targets had us stood in light, shooting into shaded areas and I accidentally shot an X on the wrong face on a walk-up losing 5 points - oops!

I made a good comeback though in the afternoon and put in a stronger score. My favourite moment though was the second chance at Target 1. This is a 64/70 yard (depending on the round) walk-up, shooting downhill at near 30 degrees. It is Fonmon's trademark shot and is very difficult - so you can imagine how pleased I was when I scored XXX5 and cleared the full 20 points on it - result!

 

In the end I finished up on 528 and took the gold for stage 4! It would’ve been a 533 had I shot that X on the right target. Fonmon North is considered one of the toughest courses in the WFAA at the moment so I was really happy with my score, even with the mistake.

Coming out of the shoot, I was pleased with my shooting but I wanted to check things over as the bow is making a bit more noise than usual on the shot and feels like it is kicking. I found the problem to be the tiller. I was changing tiller a while ago to find the best balance and found the top limb was wound in 2/3 of a turn more than the bottom. I levelled them both and then added about 1/8 of a turn to the top limb to get it to my usual sweet spot and it sounds and feels better now, nailing tight groups and shooting well.

On the subject of bow tuning, the Bowtech Brigadier is coming together nicely! My friend Dave cleared out all the overspray from the threads so I could reassemble it properly, and Kevin at Wales Archery Specialists has made me a new set of strings for it.

This is what it’s looking like now fully assembled, but with the old strings still on it. The new ones are black with red end serving.

I also bought a new set of indoor arrows while I was in Wales Archery. My 2315's are a little beat up, and they are spined to be shot out of the much faster Insanity CPXL. The Brigadier is a slower bow, so I grabbed a dozen 2314's with slightly lighter points. These will give me optimum spine at my usual 55-56lb but in a correct length arrow (not a huge overhang) and be a fair bit lighter so I will reclaim a little speed.

 

I am trying the new Gas-Pro indoor points with these, and I have ditched my Super Nock - G Nock reducers and will be trying the Easton Microlite Super nocks. These will be more consistent and they are nice and minimal, not huge like the regular Super nocks that I do not like using.

 

 

The fletches have arrived for them (red 4" Bohning Killer Vanes) and I have ordered a new clamp for my jig to put them on with a helical twist instead of just offset, to see if that makes them more stable. I will be fletching these up when the clamp arrives and will start the tuning process then to get the Brigadier up to spec ready for the winter indoor season.

 

I still have a few field shoots left to go before this though, the next ones being a mixed FITA round in a weeks time, the final round of the Welsh Field Masters Tour shortly afterwards and then the FITA Welsh Championships so plenty to keep me busy until then!

New Target - The Block Black

Hi everybody!

My layered foam garden target has been out in the elements for 6 years and has taken an absolute beating in that time. I must have put 20-30k shots into it over that time and it has been rebanded and ratcheted down more times than i can count.

Its finally given up the ghost though, and even with the softer boss I was given by a friend behind it I am burying arrows in it up the nocks or getting pass-throughs quite often. The time has come to get a new target! Enter the Block Black...

 

The Block Black is made by Field Logic in the USA and comes in a variety of sizes. I went for a middle sized one at 18" and it is bigger than I expected in the flesh. It cost £92 so it is a bit pricey, but if it performs up to its claims and the reviews I have read all over the net it will be worth the investment.

The  BB target is essentially a cube of a high density self healing foam, with a central core similar to a layered target but under high compression and fused together with Field Logic's patented 'Poly-Fusion' process. It has an inset solid carry handle at the top and is fairly light for its size so it is very portable to move around or take with you if you want to go mobile!

Regular faces can be pinned to it, but it already has high contrast targets stencilled onto the 4 shootable sides. 4 of them are multi-dot patterns and one side has an animal target showing the vitals as this is from the US market, and is aimed primarily at bow hunters.

A nice feature is that all of the  multi dots are offset from the ones on the opposite sides. This means once a side is completely shot out and you turn it, the new dots are over fresh foam so you can shoot out 4 targets in one.

So - stopping power...

I was a little short on time and didn't have chance to set up my full Unlimited rig, so I grabbed my Bow Hunter gear to test it. This is a Bowtech Guardian shooting ACC's, 56lb at about 280fps. I popped the target halfway up my garden steps so it was being shot very close, from about 5-6 yards and I was impressed with its performance.

The arrows don't thump or whack into it, they seem to be slowed down gently and still had plenty of material behind them. If it can stop them that well, at that speed from that close then I have lots of confidence with it. This was in the thinnest orientation as well, if you shoot the other sides you get another few inches of target behind them for extra stopping power.

Arrow extraction was as easy as they claim, the arrows slide out nice and easy.  I only had time to shoot about 2 dozen arrows into it so it got 4-5 arrows in each spot and they were all stopped well. In a training session I normally shoot 5-6 dozen so that will only be about 12 arrows per spot per session. At that rate I should get a lot of use out of each spot before they start getting soft, and then I will just change sides. Once all 4 sides are eventually shot out, I will stencil new spots onto it in the unused areas. I can see this lasting a long time!

Before I put it away, I couldn't resist having a pop at the animal target on it - especially considering I was holding a Bowhunter style bow...

Got him!




So only a quick session to try it out, but so far I am impressed with the quality, finish and stopping power of this Block Black target. The various surfaces and offset spots should offer a long target life and value for money. I will post a follow up to this review in a couple of weeks once I have shot several training sessions on the target, and report in on how it is holding up.

Thanks for looking!

UKIFAC - The UK & Ireland Field Archery Championships 2013

Hi everybody!

The weekend of 3/4^th of August was the UK & Ireland Field Archery Championships, hosted by Forest Spirit Archers in Kirkcaldy, Fife.... the big one!

The WFAA fielded a large team this year, and I was part of the group that travelled up together on the minibus to the event. We all met up early on Friday morning, loaded up and hit the road! It’s a good thing that we left early, the traffic in the midlands was atrocious and it took 11 and half hours to reach the hotel! We got booked in, gear stowed and went out for dinner and a few drinks to wind down after such a long trip.

 

In the morning, we all met up and went to the course in the minibus and met up with the rest of the Welsh team who had travelled down by themselves. Once we had registered and got our welcome packs and scorecards, I went to the practice butts to check everything over. I’m glad I did this as I identified that my shots were all going low, good groups but mostly 4's instead of the spot for any given distance. I ran out of practice time before I could sort it properly and we went into our groups and out onto the course for the first round.

one of the wood carvings out on the course

 

On the first day, I was shooting a Hunter round on the East course. I started off with a 19 but they were all still low, skirting the bottom edge of the spot. In the few targets that followed I shot 2 x 17’s before I identified what had happened. At some point on the journey down, my bag must have been crushed and my arrow rest had been pushed down just slightly. I loosened it and moved it back up a touch, literally less than a mm and locked it back down.

In the 13 targets that followed I only dropped 5 points, scoring 255 out of a possible 260 so that definitely did the trick! I kept this kind of performance up for most of the round, with a few 18’s near the end on the longer shots and those that were exposed to the wind. The wind was quite harsh all weekend but the courses were in dense woodland so only a few targets really felt it.

Really nice shot through the trees - literally!
 

 

In the end, I finished the Hunter round on 536 points – a new pb by 2 points which put me into first place going into day 2! I was absolutely over the moon with this performance, and I feel sure that if my rest had been in the right place at the start, and if I hadn’t deflected a shot off another archer’s arrow into the 4 ring that I might have hit 540!

We all retreated back to the hotel to get cleaned up, changed and we went back out for dinner at the same pub as on Friday night. I had plenty to drink, a fantastic curry and a great evening!

Cyril John, President of the WFAA

I think we'd had a few too many at this stage!

Posing on the Glenrothes monument!

 

We all met up in the morning again, nursing our sore heads from the night before, and got the minibus loaded up with everything for the long drive home after the shoot. We arrived in plenty of time on day 2 and I went back onto the practice butts to verify everything was ok this time around.

We were split into target groups by ranking and I was in the top group, shooting head to head with the other archers contending for the top spots. We had a good day shooting together and the competition was tight. We were at each other’s heels all day and there were only a few points in it towards the end. We were grouping so tightly that on the shared targets we kept shooting nocks and fletches off, and one of the archers in our group was down to his last useable arrows when we finished!

Getting crowded on the 50 yard target

The standard of shooting was very high at this tournament
 

 

We finished the round and the scores went in, and there was a bit of a delay before the award ceremony as the Pro shooters were still on the course. When it was all finished and the results were announced, I was absolutely thrilled to find out that I had finished in second place and had taken the silver medal in AMFU! First place was taken by Daniel Rae who shot extremely well and deserved the win, and third place went to Dennis Groom.

Now for the best part...once the final awards had been given, they announced the results of the Home Nations Challenge. To compete in this, each country must field a team of 2 x Compound, 2 x Recurve, a BowHunter and a Historical archer and I was one of the compound archers selected by out team captain at the start of the event.

 

All the scores are added and the highest cumulative score wins. The results were read out, and Wales took the top spot by a commanding lead! We were all called up and presented with a gold medal and Gary Hart, the team captain called the whole Welsh squad together for a team photo with the trophy.

 

 

This was an incredible achievement, and it is the first time that Wales have brought the Home Nations trophy home since 1992 – the first win in 21 years! Mat Symmonds and Cyril John, VP and President of the WFAA congratulated the whole team on our most successful UKIFAC turnout in memory, with 7 new champions and many more silver and bronze medallists as well as the Home Nations win.

It took about 9 hours to get home because of some bad weather slowing us down on the motorway, and we arrived back in South Wales in the early hours of Monday morning, but spirits were high and we all considered it to be an incredible trip.

All in all, a very successful weekend that will be hard to top!

 

The Welsh & Open Field Archery Championships 2013

Hi everybody!

It's been quite a while since I shot this, but I forgot to update my blog!

The weekend of 29/30^th of June was the Welsh & Open Field Archery Championships, hosted by Llantwit Major Archers at Fonmon Castle. It was a 2 day shoot, shooting an IFAA Hunter round on Saturday and the Field round on Sunday. We went down nice and early on the Saturday and got a few practice ends in to verify my marks and make sure everything was good, and then grabbed a spot of breakfast before the groups were called and we went out onto the course.

The Hunter round was shot on the South course and the weather was actually really good for us! It started off slightly overcast, but this lifted and it was nice and sunny all day. The ground was fairly dry and easy going compared to usual, so footing on the targets was ok. I shot a good round, with consistent performance between the halves, shooting 266 in the first half and picking up 2 more points for 268 in the second. This put me on a final score of 534!

This is a new PB for the hunter round by 8 points, my second GBM score and the highest IFAA score I have shot to date! I was absolutely thrilled with this result, and it put me in joint 1^st place with David Home, a professional archer who also finished on 534 so the shooting was going to be tight on Sunday.

Shooting the 53 yard walk-up

On the Sunday we started slightly earlier, and were split into groups based on bow style and position so I was shooting with David and the other AMFU archers, and  the pressure was on. Fatigue is always an issue on the second day with stiff shoulders and tired backs. I didn’t shoot any practice arrows and I think this was a mistake as my first few targets felt difficult to shoot and were a bit shaky.

Because of this I dropped points early on (10 points on the first 5 targets) which dented my score too much to recover from. Once I got up to par I shot the rest of the round fairly well but because of the poor start I finished up on 522 points.

The results went in and David Home took the win by 7 points, and I finished in second place by a comfortable margin and came away with the silver medal! I am really pleased with the results – a silver medal, picked up my GBM patch from 2 weeks ago, and shot a new Hunter and all-time PB.

So lessons learned for this weekend – get more rest the night before day 2, eat/drink more healthily between the shoots (I doubt the Chinese takeaway and ale did me any favours!) and make use of the practice targets to warm up before going back out to get on a roll before you start scoring.

Equipment wise I am really happy with how the CPXL is shooting now. The new strings are settled in and shooting very nicely indeed and I seem to have everything dialled in. It is holding steady and putting arrows in the X from 20 feet to 80 yards, so long as I shoot it properly so it can be left alone now.

I don’t have any tournaments on for a little while, so I am going to use this time to have a bit of a play with my other bows. I haven’t shot my Guardian in a little while so I will take that up the club to have some fun with, and my Brigadier is in the middle of a makeover!

It was matt black and a bit worn from its previous owners so I had it stripped and powder coated. I always liked the look of the Specialist in the limited edition gloss-white, so I had my Brigadier done in that colour.

I am in the process of refitting the various components but the coaters didn’t mask off the threads as they were supposed to, and the arrow rest/sight mount threads are caked up. You can’t get the screws in them and the rest one rounded off the first thread, but one of my friends has a set of taps so he can clear the threads for me. I am going to pop round to his place in a few days and get it sorted. Once that’s done then I can reassemble it properly and tune her up ready to use in the next indoor season.