Is there any difference as far as speed out to 40 yrds between 4 in vanes and feathers?
I know feathers are lighter then vanes but there also wider then vanes, how about accuracy.
How much drag feathers have depends on how much helical or offset you put on them. Many folks use too much helical. I think many use too much feather, too. You don't need 5" feathers to control a 100 gn Muzzy, for instance. 4" should do the job just fine. You talk some big honkin', unvented 2-blade like a Zwickey Delta, then yes. You need some big feathers to keep that bad boy going straight.
I don't have data to back me up, but if the feathered arrow has the same size fletch and same degree of helical/offset as the vane fletched arrow, I'd put my money on the feather arrow to win the race to 40 yards.
Norb Mullaney is renown for his testing and expertise in arrow flight, KE, ballistics, etc. Many of the charts found on the hunting related sites and used (charts) by many bow equipment manufacturers and bow shooters are designed by Norb Mullaney.
My neighbor just did a test on his target arrows. He used 3" vanes and 3" feathers on the same arrow. At 30 yards he was hitting 4 inches higher with the feathered arrows. The weights (which he measured on my scale) were:
3 vanes = 19.2G
3 feathers = 6.2G
It kind of surprised him how much higher they shot at that range.
Your neighbor SHOULD be suprized that the feather arrows hit that much higher. From a well tuned bow, they should be hitting practically the same hole as the vane fletched arrows. I'd bet he's got some vane contact that's kicking the tail of his arrows and making them nose down and making his vane fletched arrows hit lower than they should.
But that's a good illustration of how much more forgiving feathers are than vanes.
He's got a drop away rest which so I'm not sure it's fletching contact. Now he does shoot a very light arrow.....around 300G so the vanes do take up a larger percentage of weight than most arrows. Not sure that would account for this however.
Well, mrfritz, you'd know better than me since you've seen his setup. On the other hand, I've seen fletch contact with dropaways too, either when the tiller is off, or when the nockset is too low regardless of tiller, or when the dropaway isn't set to dropaway fast enough. It might be something he'd want to double check, just to be sure.
When they're both setup and tuned correctly, feathered arrows and vaned arrows should shoot to practically the same point of impact out to 50 yards. Just the feathered arrows would make the trip a bit quicker.
Feathers and Vanes?
