I'm a nerdy compounder.

Archery. Mostly words, few images.

[parks-and-recreation-department]

[archeree]

First end at 50m, WA 1440

[archeree]

Saturday & Sunday. WA 1440: 1246 & 1304

Long time, no blog. This weekend was the first WA 1440 I’ve shot since March.

Saturday: that horrible score was a mix of bad weather and me fiddling round with my sight on Friday night installing my new knobs & decals. Stupid thing to do the night before a tournament. Mmmph.

Sunday. Perfect weather.

70m: 316 (PB 334) 60m: 328 (PB 336) 50m: 322 (PB 330) 30m: 338 (PB 350)

I’m really happy with the first three distances. I was *really* happy with 50, especially when I started with 57, all gold. 30m started off badly but I tidied it up as I went along.

Over the past couple of months I’ve changed a lot of stuff. Simplified everything a great deal, since I suspect I had let too much complication and tension creep into my form. Most importantly I changed my anchor to better accommodate the slight change of position at the different distances. Which, incidentally, is probably how I used to shoot when I was shooting quite well a couple of years ago.

Next target :1350.

[archeree]

Sunday.  WA 18m: 549

I got all inspired after watching the Vegas indoor shoot on Youtube last night.  George Ryals IV (AKA GRIV, who writes some really good compound archery articles) was commentating and he made an interesting comment about the dots on the compound scope that the women were using.  They were both using large dots - I’m not sure how big, but he commented that he guessed they were big enough to cover, or nearly cover the entire yellow. Which is a good thing, especially when you’re shooting big far indoor arrows, because your eyes aren’t automatically drawn to the big black holes in the target face, which are often outside the very centre of the target.  Huh, I thought, interesting theory.

In among my spare archery stuff, I found my old (slightly scratched) lens and my collection of dot and ring stickers.  I found a dot that looked about the right size as the yellow on a 40cm face at 18m, by doing some guesstimation with some scaled target printouts, and put it all together.

This afternoon I started in and noticed straight off that I was way out to the right.  That’s odd - but I realised that either this or the other lens decal might not be centred correctly.  Adjusted and shot about 5 warmup ends of 6, then a full WA 18m.  In the second half I was noticing that I was definitely throwing more 8s (4 yesterday, 6 today), but on the other hand, I was also shooting more 10s (9 yesterday, 15 today).  Ended up on 549, which is 4 points up from yesterday, and marginally lower than my “normal” score that I shoot with my big fat arrows (550-555).  I’m also *still* centred off to the right.

Verdict: it felt less twitchy, so I’ll stick with it.

[archeree]

Saturday: WA 18m, 545

Hey, long time, no tumblr.  I'vee been shooting but my summer season was really mediocre so I wasn’t enthusiastic enough to write.  But I have been making strings and tinkering with stuff, and at the moment I’m heading into the southern hemisphere winter season, so it’s back to 18m.

So, last week I shot my first 18m round and got 531, which I was quite content with as a season starter with my skinny arrows (my PB is 561 with my big fat X23s).

During the week I decided to experiment with more weight on my longrod.  I had 142g (5oz) on there and I added more to bring that up to 255g (9oz).  It seemed to help my sight hold steadier, so for Science I repeated the round again this saturday.  My front arm and shoulder were definitely tiring by the end (I did about 30 warmup arrows, so 90 arrows in total). You can see where I was popping bad arrows, most often out to the upper and lower right.

Definitely seems worthwhile keeping the weight, and once I’ve got my fatties fletched I’ll see how my score goes.  What I’d like to be shooting by the end of the season is a consistent 10-9-9 for each end.

The screenshot is from xringscoring.com, which has a mobile site (which seems to work just fine without mobile coverage).  It’s a little clunky in places but arrow entry for plotting is really well done and it gives me enough stats to keep me happy.

[archeree]

Saturday. Canadian 900: 805

Back in the 800s again :)

(I actually shot two Canadians in November which were extremely limp scores: 767 & 766.  The first was windy and the second was after I'd been away from shooting for a few weeks, and I didn't blog either).

Started off pretty sloppy, and I'd only shot a couple of ends before I started scoring so I definitely hadn't gotten into my shooting groove.  55m was pretty unremarkable and my handy-dandy droid scoring app (Archery ScorePad) was predicting around 750.

45m was a slight improvement - I did do a few silly high shots where I wasn't really settled in.  I also managed to shoot 7 arrows in one end so I lost a 10 in favour of the lowest scoring arrow, an 8.

Totally hit my stride at 35m.  They were just popping through nice and easy even though my ankle was pretty sore (achilles tendinopathy).  Thought I *might* have a chance at getting close to 800 and was really happy with my eventual score of 805.

55m: 252 (PB 267)
 45m: 270 (PB 278)  
35m: 283 (PB 284)

Next up: I really want to do some volume shooting at WA distances, or even WA distances +5m, so 55m and 35m on the reduced 80cm face.  Really start to get comfy with that sight picture.  Also:

clicks up/down/left/right to move a scoring ring at each distance

re-do torque tuning now that I have my bent cable guide

fletch & assemble new arrows, whenever they arrive

re-do centre shot after new arrows are all done.

re-do

[archeree]

General update

I've not been shooting much as I've had a bit of hefty life stuff happen recently.  My dad passed away in November after being diagnosed with cancer about 18 months ago so I was out of town for a few weeks.  On top of that I've aggravated my right achilles at the tournament in October (it was niggling before then but I think that tipped it over the edge), so I've got about 3 months worth of physio ahead of me to get it strong and hopefully pain-free.

So, I'm not going to nationals this year as the Universe just keeps telling me to have a relaxing holiday instead of pushing myself to shoot. I haven't shot a full WA 1440 since March and the next tourney is at the beginning of February so I'll be focussing on that.

New arrows still haven't arrived.

That's about all.  Looking forward to 2015  :)

[archeree]

I've ordered some Protours.

[archeree]

Saturday. Canadian 900: 804

So my score break-down pretty much confirmed what I felt at the time, which was that my 55m was a bit patchy but my 45 was extremely nice.  I was a bit up and down on the target at 55, because 1) I didn't trust my sight settings and 2) I wasn't consistently putting my index finger under my jawline.  Once I got that right things started to settle down.

Three-day weekend this weekend.  Mmmm, should I do a WA 1440?

55m: 252 (PB 267)
 45m: 275 (PB 278)  
35m: 277 (PB 284)

[archeree]

What's all this reddit crap in the archery tag?  No point reblogging it so is it just traffic bait?

[follow-your-arrow-1998]

Would like opinions on a sight

Well, I found out what was wrong. My sight doesn’t have 3rd axis adjustment. I will keep shooting while tilting my bow till I get a new sight.

My pro shop recommended the Axcel Achieve CXL. I am pulling 35lbs and shoot a 230 grain arrow and a 300 grain arrow. Would this sight have enough elevation adjustment to get to 70 meters?

Anyone know other sights you would recommend? Anyone know anything about a Sure-Loc Supreme 550?

[archeree]

I shoot with the Sure-Loc Challenger 550, which is the model down from the Supreme.  It's a good solid sight with nice adjustments.

As for whether you can reach 70m, you should be able to work it out by using your current sightmarks to see how long the vertical bar needs to be (for example with my 305gn arrows and 50# compound I need less than 2in of vertical adjustment to cover all distances from 18-70m).

[archeree]

Weekend: Burton, 778; Canadian 900, 795

Went to a wee local tournament this past weekend.  Total line of 21 archers, and I was the only female compounder, which mean that I won two gold medals (luckily for me they gave out medals in uncontested divisions!).

Saturday was a Burton.  My first, so automatic PB.  Windy, though, and I did struggle to pull through sometimes, because I'm pretty sure I was really, really tense trying to fight the wind.  I sorted out a better approach so things perked up a bit coming into the last third of the shoot.  But I'm starting to think my straight front arm isn't doing me any favours.  I switched because I was getting variable right and lefts depending how much of a push I was doing, and the straight arm sorted that out.  I may try going back to a more relaxed bow arm.

Sunday, Canadian 900.  Calm and HOT.  Probably not hot for you continental Americans or Aussies, but hot for me.  I was hoping to crack 800 but was quietly happy getting this close.   

Breakdown:

55m: 254 (PB 267)
 45m: 265 (PB 278)  
35m: 276 (PB 284)

Must do: sort out clicks right/left and ticks up/down required to move a full colour on the target face at each distance!

Casualties:

two fletchings gone (one speared by the guy next to me)

two points left in the target

one nock obliterated and pin severely dented, this time by me

The club used pinex targets (ew) made up of strips of PAINTED pinex (double ew) stacked horizontally.  So if your arrow slipped in between two strips it basically got concreted in with melted paint.  There wasn't enough silicon spray in the world ....

Back to beautiful danage in about 5 days when I get back home :)

[archeree]

Right now I’m having a discussion with someone on a forum who’s arguing that girls’ tendency to “hold back” in sports and in things like PE in High School is due to evolution, because boys have testosterone and have evolved to be stupid and aggressive, and girls have evolved to be more intelligent...

[archeree]

Follow-up to this: the guy I was having the discussion with simply doesn't agree that social conditioning plays a part in behaviour (wrt participation or behaviour in sports).  The general consensus of him and the other dudebros in the forum is that nature programmes us.

The discussion included both the gender thing and was nibbling around the edges of LBGT* participation in archery.  The forum didn't get too deep into it but someone posted a link to a study done in England which suggested that lesbian and bisexual women have a higher participation in sports than "all women"; gay men also participated more than "all men".https://www.sportengland.org/research/encouraging-take-up/key-influences/sexual-orientation/

In my part of the world archery is very much a white, male sport; as for LBGT* participation I couldn't really say.  My gaydar is pretty crap at the best of times.

[archeree]

Right now I'm having a discussion with someone on a forum who's arguing that girls' tendency to "hold back" in sports and in things like PE in High School is due to evolution, because boys have testosterone and have evolved to be stupid and aggressive, and girls have evolved to be more intelligent and protect themselves.

I'm arguing social conditioning (although of course you can't completely ignore testosterone) which teaches children acceptable ways to behave and interact - for example little boys being rewarded with praise for playing roughly because they're a "good little rugby player" so are much more likely to repeat the behaviour. Girls do not usually receive the same sort of feedback for this behaviour - they might be ignored or discouraged.

Also mentioned the "throw like a girl" videos.

Anything else I can use to back up my argument?

(wider context: gender imbalance in archery)

[archeree]

Saturday. Portsmouth 1 (inner 10): 565

Previous attempts: 558, 551.

*Last month* of the winter postal. 18m all winter, and I thought that I wouldn't get sick of it, but even alternating this and a longer distance didn't really keep me interested.  Plus this round just seems to defeat me - it's shot on a 60cm face.  Big, big face. 

So here I had a 3cm ring (this round uses the inner x-ring as a 10 for compound) to hit to get a 10, compared to a 2cm ring to hit to get a 10 on the smaller 40cm face. Today I got 26 10s, and my best ever WA 18m I got 23, so for some reason I'm just not performing as well with this particular round as I could.

But: it's a 7-point bump over the first time I shot this (on Thursday, 558). And it'll do.  It'll do because I want to get outside and shoot long distances.  Well longish, since the first tourney I have in a month is a Canadian 900 and a Burton - 55m max.

On Thursday I did try an open stance for the first time (I usually shoot dead square) and I used the open yesterday too.  Today I went back to square.  So now I'm wondering whether to give the new technique a decent try, or not...

[archeree]

New outdoor season, new wraps & fletchings. Wraps from custommadewraps.com, orange Vanetec shield vanes, and Easton G pin nocks. Probably orange for home and blue if I need an alternate. Just bored of the white on white. Time for a change. Plus these wraps have my name and arrow number printed on, so no more label maker labels.

[archeree]

Gearing up for summer

Only one more indoor shoot, or maybe two.  Three at the most.   then we're into summer...

I don't actually NEED anything.  My gear is fine and I'm quite happy not buying a new set of arrows until I've reached a particular score in the WA1440.  But I'm getting a little bored with the white-on white arrow colour scheme (white Easton Tite Flites on plain white wraps with orange nocks).

So in lieu of shiny new arrows, I finally bought a set of Custom Made Arrow Wraps and ordered a new bag of fletchings - Vanetec shield vanes, in *bright* orange.  It'll look a little bit like this, except different:

Other stuff: I've been trying to figure out how to quiet down my bow.  It's not very loud or badly noisy but I'd just like to dampen it down.  It has Airshox so no need to add limb savers, so I could get something like a BowJax riser or stabiliser damper, or just attach something to the rear mounting hole, like a regular damper & weight (this is what I've done as an experiment as I had an old recurve damer & a few weights in my box of old crap).  Looks a bit silly but we'll see if it makes any difference at all.

Still fiddling round with weights to see if the "lift" on release can be tamed.  Putting more on the front - even a little bit more - made it too draggy.  So I took off a 1oz weight from the back and replaced if with two 1/3oz weights.  Still lifting, so tomorrow I'll take off another of the 1/3 oz.

Lastly: given up the finger sling for the meantime in favour of a bowsling.  I don't really need either - I don't grip but my evenly weighted rig doesn't drop or tip.  The sling will catch it if something does go wrong, and it's faster to get on and off than the finger sling.

Roll on summer...