Fletching orientation
 

Guys and gals - did any of you see the show Western Exreme on the Outdoor channel where Jim Burnworth was explaining the fletching orientation on his arrows? From what I understand, he uses the 2" Blazer vanes in the std 120* pattern but vane #2 is placed 1" ahead of vane #1 and vane #3 is placed 1" ahead of vane #2. (I believe he used 1" as the forward distance.) It was hard to hear him with the grandkids zooming around the house.
Now this does slightly change your FOC%. But it also give the arrow a (vanes) a longer profile. Apparently this improves stabilization and better accurac.
I am wondering if anyone else has tried this. If so, what are your conclusions?

I seen it but I thought he said 1/4 to 1/2 in. with a slightly helical.I dont believe it will change the FOC cause I believe that it goes by weight of vanes. As for trying it havent yet but am giving it some thought.
By offseting them slightly you making a 2 in vane or blazer seem like a 3 in vane cause it spins it catching the air off the leading vane and making it spin quicker than having all 3 vane equal. also allowing less drag on other 2 vanes cause the air is being directed to the next vane beside it. Just a thought not saying that how it works. Maybe this afternoon will make a few old 55/75 goldtips with 4 in offset like 3/8" with a left heical and shoot them tomorrow night and see what i came up with for accurcy.

Very interesting concept.....please let us know if your trials make a differance.

Ive seen that done before . It is not going to help you any. And it mat not hurt it either.
What i'm saying is there was concluded that there was not signifacate advantage.
I'll stick with the traditional way

My thoughts on it are that you still only have the same amount of surface area for the air to come in contact with.

Well did them up the other night and shot them yesterday. Can say after about 30 shots with both type of fletching. Didnt really see any difference between the two cept at 30-40 yds the off set vanes group started to group slightly tighter than other vanes. Want to do more testing before come up with verdict.

the aerodynamics of that setup will only create unwanted drag and cancels out the purpose of using short vanes in the first place.
the whole purpose for using short vanes is to eliminate as much drag as possible.
i did quite a bit of research a while back with blazer vanes when they first came out.
the best placement to place the fletching as far aft as you can. if a release is used you can put them nearly on the end if you shoot traditional then you need a little more room for your fingers.

everything is debatable though.

Exactly, fletching that way isn't going to create any more or less drag than fletching the regular way and it isn't going to steer any better or worse. It will lessen the FOC very slightly but it will be negligible.

Each vane is a specific size and each vane creates a specific amount of drag.

The only thing I can see that this might be doing is causing the vanes to the rear of the lead vane to be in slightly more turbulent air than the leading vane which would be detrimental to accuracy.

It's just the latest "thing" that some "pro" can say "I thought of that". Whoopty doo. I've seen different "pro's" trying to pass this fletching style off as the next best thing for a number of years now and it still hasn't caught on.

The purpose any vane is to create drag. The purpose of the short vane isn't to eliminate drag but rather to create as much drag as a standard 4" vane and to increase FOC slightly. Creating the drag is accomplished in two ways. #1 is that they are stiffer than a standard 4" vane so they are more resistant to deformation when traveling through the air at speed. #2 is that they are taller than a standard 4" vane so the tips of the vanes are in less turbulent air surrounding the shaft. The less turbulent the air the better fletching works. If it were beneficial to eliminate drag then we would all b shooting bare shafts.

Whatever works for him.

Arrows have had fletchings at the end for a long time. Missiles, torpedoes, and rockets are the same way. Would believe there is a good reason for it. Might have something to do with better stabilization at the rear where its needed.

Messed around with them some this am after doing a 3-D shoot. A couple guys seen them in my case and wanted to try them. Between the 3 of us shooting them at various distances. Going to say not much of a difference in how they flew. The groups were same or slightly larger than other arrow groups.

I got a dozen maxima reds done in a western style fletching with 2'' blazers. Been shooting them all yr and to be honest i don't really see much of a difference unless you are shooting out past 50 yds in crosswinds. That is when i noticed a difference. They seem to recover faster and fly more stable out to 50yd and beyond. I actually hate the way they look but i have to admit ( speaking for myself ) they really seem to work at longer distances and in strong crosswinds. All i can say is give em a try!
Mathews Heli-m, 27.5 , 65#, Quad HDX, Axcel Armortech HD, Maxima Reds , Ktech stab, Carter release..

Seen a few guys do it, played with it a bit myself just to see what difference it makes, since the SCIENCE BEHIND IT doesn't support what is claimed about it.

No benefit. It's hype. In certain instances, it very likely can destabilize your arrow as much or worse than it could ever benefit the flight. I haven't found any well-founded science for why it actually would benefit, although I've found plenty that proves it would hurt your flight.

Honest opinion is that it's voodoo. If you believe that something gives you an edge, it can, even if it really doesn't. If you believe someone else something knows something you don't, it gives them an edge, even if they really don't.

Pin stripes win baseball games.

I can imagine someone's already done a scientific comparison with a shooting machine. If not, someone should do so in order to settle the matter objectively.

I think for someone to get motivated to test this out of a hooter-shooter, it'd need to have sound science behind it, but it doesn't.

From a coaxial airflow standpoint (i.e. down the shaft), there's no difference in drag, significant at least, on each vane, or the triplet of vanes. They're still the same profile, still impart the same drag.

BUT, that does produce an imbalanced torque at the broadhead (or rather center of mass). That ONE vane being out of place will create a translational force perpendicular to the shaft at a position CLOSER to the tip than the other vanes, which promotes INSTABIILTY. Seems like instability is the opposite of what we're going for.

From a rotational stability standpoint, now we're talking about an unbalanced rotor. Common sense that an unbalanced fan isn't stable, we've all heard that whirring and felt the vibration on a cheap fan with unbalanced blades.

Now let's talk about crosswinds. Crosswinds only care about profile. If the vanes are spinning, now you have a LONGER overall profile standing up in the wind, aka, a bigger sail to throw your tail off course. If they're NOT spinning, then that one odd-ball will catch the wind differently than the other vanes, which will produce a random result, based on which direction the odd-ball vane is pointing relative to the wind. Since it's closer to the front, it will impart a lower torque in the wind than the other vanes, so if it's clocked up with the others clocked down, a crosswind will actually create two types of torque on the arrow: 1) rotational torque - it'll encourage the arrow to roll or spin towards the farther back vane, 2) levering torque against the center of balance - it'll push the tail more dramatically based on the further back vane, which starts out as a linear movement, but translates into a rotational movement since the arrow is cylindrical. And then you're back to the case above about spinning arrows producing MORE tail drag due to increased side profile.

So what theory would experimentation be proving? Because the science doesn't support that it would be beneficial.

What I expect is happening is that someone does it, someone that shot very well, and someone else thought it was giving that person an advantage. In the height of a season, I can stack sticks bareshaft at 40yrds, and I know guys that can do so at much longer ranges. That really tells me it doesn't matter much what vanes I use for anything shorter than 40yrds, I just need vanes that won't screw up my arrow flight. But does that mean that bareshaft would be the best method for 100yrd archery? No, it's inclusive, not exclusive. It only means that bareshaft DOES shoot well at 40yrds. Off-set cockvanes also DO shoot well at 40yrds (did for me), but that doesn't mean they're the best. It just means you're not asking very much from the arrows yet. At longer ranges when things start to get hairy for arrow stability, that's when symmetry in the tail really comes into play, and off-set vanes would give themselves away as "something different, but not something better".

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