measuring flight shooting distance with google earth (and arrow discussion)

[joachimM]

Tried some flight shooting today with a fixed broken bow (gave it a backing) and wanted to try if it shoots about as well as before the break.
Measuring large (well, large...) distances isn't very easy though: I don't have a detailed trimble GPS that measures up to the cm, or some other laser tools or specialized optics. I don't care about that detail either. Approximately is enough for me.
This is how I do it: I start from a known point that I can locate exactly enough on a satellite photo in google earth, and shoot into arable land or pastures with some easy points of reference like hedges, the boundary of a meadow, a big tree ... I then only need to measure with a tape measure (or when I'm lazy pace off) the nearest distance to a point of reference with a known distance from my shooting point. 

The below pic shows my shooting spot right next to my house. The flight path crosses my own land mostly, but it now lands in my neighbour's meadow mostly (we do get along well enough though  )
Today my furthest shot was 4.5 m from the boundary of that meadow, distance from my shooting spot to that boundary is 240 m, so I shot some 235 m far.
Pretty easy, and no need to pace out and measure your average pace length or so.

Not displeased with the result (my furthest so far) but still far behind the real flight shooters here (especially for the primitive simple composite class <50#, despite my carbon arrows). Most of all, I need to tune arrows and work on my technique: I always see my arrows kick sideways, so they must lose a lot of speed early on.

But it's fun to make progress.

Joachim

[Badger]

  I think Allen case has a gps program that gives him fairly accurate measurement. Good that you have a place to practice, you will improve rapidly if you stay at it. That sidways kick does cost you a lot of distance, I fight that constantly. You will find that if you can't see your arrow it will likley be past 300 meters. If you can see it, likley below 300 meters.

[avcase]

As Steve mentioned, I have often resorted to a GPS to get some rough measurements. I don't have a super accurate GPS, but it gets me close enough.

In the last few years, I've used a GPS app on my phone.  It is pretty handy at our events at the salt flats because I use it to map out the shooting lines we set up each year and mark where some key long distance shots were found. It pretty neat to be able to pull up the arrow distributions for past years at any time. For really long shooting events, the arrows can be difficult to find, so I used the GPS to save the traces of our search patterns so we know where we have looked, and where we haven't.

Alan

[joachimM]

Thanks Steve and Alan

Well my bows likely aren't up to scratch either, but I'm working on it, and on my form and arrow tuning. Got some 10 m further yesterday (244 m, 267 yds). Progress in little steps, but I don't expect to go any further with this bow than 275 m (300 yds) at its very best with a dry fire speed of 195 fps. I gave it a deep heat treating two days ago, and hope it will stay together when I retiller and shoot it.
I'm afraid I just fell in the "good-better-broken" booby trap that got me a few times already...

Am working on a few other bows and thinking of arrow "tillering". Much of the arrow kicking sideways is, at least I think, due to regular arrows having too much inertia at the extremities when leaving the bow. Barrel-shaping is a logical step, but I want to find out what amount of barreling is ideal. Maybe somebody already did this?

Joachim

[mikekeswick]

Yep those Turkish fellas have arrow profiles well worked out!
I'm afraid I don't have a link but there are documents listing all the specs that you need on Turkish flight arrows on the web. I have it printed out from years ago and will have a look to see if it has any website details on it.

It depends how good your shaft wood is as to how far you can reduce them but as you say if you lose the point weight and move the balance point and center of pressure point back then the arrow doesn't necessarily follow a 'normal' ballistic curve.

[redhawk55]

This seems to be the missing link: http://www.turkishculture.org/lifestyles/turkish-culture-portal/turkish-flight-arrows-554.htm?type=1

Michael

[PatM]

I made a simple bamboo flight arrow a number of years ago and it would reliably travel a good deal farther with a small point in place.

[mikekeswick]

Yes Redhawk - that is it! Now I can print a new copy off, my old one is barely decipherable now.
I strongly recommend reading Sarachen Archery and its section on flight arrows. The center of pressure is a concept I never even thought about until reading that chapter.
What's your point Pat? Of course you need some weight - its all about tuning the various factors involved. One thing does not a flight arrow make The whole has to be right. When I said 'lose the point weight' it would have been more correct to say 'reduce the point weight significantly compared to a regular target arrow'. Joachim  mentions carbon arrows, regular arrows and barrelling hence my comment on 'losing the point weight'. Those carbon x10's are winning everything in target shooting and they are barrelled. I'd quite like to buy some as practise flight arrows if they are light....but they are £30 each per shaft, £360/512$ per dozen phew!