I owe Dave Ross a huge thank-you for helping me acquire the Saber; it came up for auction the very day that I had just drained my coffers to acquire the Drake! Dave snagged it and tested it a bit while I replenished the piggy bank, and just this week he mailed it east to me.

I shot for about an hour, and basically there is no difference in cast between these two; both woodies and aluminum arrows were always within a yard or two of each other.

I had noticed Larry saying in an earlier thread that these Sabers were terrific bows and that he wished he had kept one for flight shooting... and I can certainly see why. It's a handsome bow as well, IMO.

At any rate, I called it a tie for the day and headed home, because I was expecting another bow in the afternoon mail...

...and lo and behold, it arrived: a 51# Wing Thunderbird; the pre-AMF variety that bowyer Don Adams has called the best recurve made.

I was especially delighted to get it because it was a close match in weight to my 1962 Howatt Monterey, which casts an arrow like nobody's business. The T-Bird is 51.4# at my draw; the Howatt is 51.25#. This certainly called for another faceoff today!

When I strung them up, I was struck by how different their limb profiles seemed. Surely I would have a clear winner today...

It was a perfect day for it today-- blue skies, no wind, no houses, and about 325 yards of open space at my disposal.

The field is about four miles from my house, so I got in a little bike ride as well. Motorists give you lots of room when you're riding with two strung bows and a dozen arrows.

So here's what happened, for the second day running: not a bit of difference between these two old classics. This group is typical of what they were doing each round-- always within a yard or two of one another. In this photo the front and rear arrows were from the Monterey; the two in the middle from the T-Bird. These were 525-grain cedars, going about 205 yd. downrange.

So that's it... yet another tie today. These two bows are as different as night and day in terms of appearance, profile, riser weight, and so on... and yet they are both incredibly pleasant to shoot.

The T-Bird is my heaviest bow, at 2.93 pounds, and I expect to see dividends from all that mass when I'm target shooting with it.

The Monterey is way more aristocratic to look at, lighter in the hand by almost exactly a pound... and still one of the most accurate bows I have, perhaps because the grip is so perfectly sculpted to fit the hand that it just doesn't move much at release.

As self-appointed President and Dictator-for-Life of the Maine chapter of the "Low Orbit League" (LOL, as we are sometimes known), my duties primarily involve pitting classic bows against each other to see which one will send an arrow farthest.

This winter, while Frisky sat by the fire, I flight tested in frosty fields and on frozen ponds. This spring, while Frisky fiddled away the time cutting dogwood shoots, I crept onto golf courses at dusk and continued my flight testing. Now, with summer imminent, golfers swarming my test range, and still no progress in Minnesota, I resumed my flight testing this weekend in a nearby hayfield.

Yesterday's faceoff was between a 1963-or-64-ish Drake (62" and 60# at my draw) and a bow that Larry Hatfield will recognize; a 1997 (or 1998?) Martin Saber... not the new, evil Martin Saber, but the pure and beautiful original Saber (62" and 59.5# at my draw). Here they are, all strung up and raring to go.

Kerry, nice looking bows, funny thread!

Somebody wake Phil up, LOL; he's jumbled up the whole order of my postings! The #6 post was sent in first... perhaps he's trying to cover for Frisky!

By the way, in addition to conducting these tests, the one other official act at the May meeting of the Low Orbit League was to drum Frisky out of our hallowed halls.. at least until he demonstrates that those bows on his wall can actually launch an arrow or two! He's on probation until then.

Well, it's obvious Frosty is laying low. Not too much to say in the face of such scientific testing methods! But....give him the benefit of the doubt. The spring thaw will come to MN in a few weeks and he might actually get outside to shoot an arrow or two. Of course the cold, heavy air will give him an excuse, so we may have to wait until it warms up there nearer to the fall(July!)

From my experience, the Wing T-Bird was the fastest of the early Wings. I never liked that big grip and riser weight, but yours actually looks like a relatively small grip. Darn good bows though. Your posts are fascinating, Kerry. I love seeing how much fun you're having with those "antique" bows of yours! I wish we lived closer together so I could put a couple of my old Widows up against your treasures.

so, how did the saber and drake do? notice that the drake has a built in overdraw. harry was always a sneaky guy.

No, no; the next post from Minnesota will be complaining about blackflies and mosquitoes making it impossible to go out and shoot. He's just lucky I'm a benevolent dictator, and will probably let him back into the club once he actually gets off his butt and does some shooting.

I think the grips got smaller on all the Wings once Bill Stewart arrived there (although the original Presentation was elegant in every way, including its grip). At the risk of tampering with a classic, I might get the rasp out and take a bit off the T-Bird's grip; it could still be smaller to my tastes.

There's a couple of bows I still want to test, Tom-- I have reason to believe that a '63-65 transitional "Gordon Browning" bow may outcast anything I've tried yet. My 1965 Safari II at 47# is just a yard or two short of that 51# Monterey, and I think the Nomad II might do just as well... maybe even the earliest Explorer II's. Also, I need to try some Herter's from the mid- to late-Sixties; something like that 63" International Match Hunter for instance.

I'll make it back out west one of these days, and bring my toys with me!

I laugh when I read these posts, as the poor Saber and T-Bird would have no chance against my Deathmaster and Grail. I mean, they're not even in the same league!

Joe

Larry, I wasn't even measuring their overall distance; just comparing relative performance. I know from other tests that the 60# Drake sends those 525-grain woodies about 10 yards farther than the 51# Monterey; say 210-215 yd., and that it sends 500-grain aluminums with vanes around 255-260 yd. Whatever it did yesterday, the Saber matched it shot for shot. They took turns beating each other. I honestly couldn't see a difference. Now, the Drake was using a bare Dacron string, and the Saber had FF but with little rubber silencers, so maybe it all evened out with the strings. My draw is 29-1/4", and I didn't feel any stack in either bow... in fact no stack in all four of them.

Too bad that Saber is too heavy for the 50# broadhead class, or else I'd mail it out on loan and have you take it to Bonneville this September!

just curious. i am going to have more bows than i can shoot there this year!!! thanks for the offer though,

Since Harry passed, Bonneville has become the slow bow flight championships.

Joe

That Saber is such a nice visual throwback to the old Catalina/ Palomar type of riser (a full 26+" between fadeouts), but those short limbs sure give it some snap as well. I had almost gotten one a year ago when Gail Martin's family was auctioning off his bows; I kicked myself when I missed out... so when I saw this one I knew just what to do (call Dave up and plead, LOL!). Of course he knew my motives were pure and not personal,God bless him, and so he snapped it up for me. Now that's a friend!

Cookedstix, I am getting 221 yards with a 50# self bow and 231 yards with a hickory backed osage both using thick linen strings and 500 grain wood arrows. I believe the 50# field recurve record for broadhead is close to 330 yards. 450 grain arrow with vanes.

Badger, Those results sound wonderful! I can imagine that you are "out-standing in your field" a fair amount at this time of year, as am I.

Now that I've temporarily ejected Frisky from membership in the Low-Orbit League, we could use a good man to head up the Midwestern Chapter. I'm thinking we'd be much better off with a Badger than a Gopher, wouldn't we?

Do you have any performance tips to share about your bows or arrows? Or maybe that stuff is top-secret until after Bonneville; maybe you should give some "disinformation" here to keep Larry and Arvin off the scent.A certain amount of devious behavior is not just tolerated, but rather expected and encouraged, here in the Low-Orbit League. I'm currently planning a return to the golf course as soon as this next full moon arrives...

My biggest tip would be learn how to use a fast release, practice it over a chrono. I imagine 1,000 guys out there are building bows just like mine. Learn how to rip your finger off the string without the string moving forward and at the same time throwing your bow arm forward like a left jab. Kind of like shooting out of a moving car. Practice this over a chrono. I might retire from flight shooting this year so I can do some other things but plan to continue to promote it.

Below are some records I have kept for about 15 yrs on bows I owned. I shot all them for distance using a 525 grain arrow and on a windless or near windless day. If there was some wind i would shoot both into the wind and with the wind and take the average. I also took the average on windless days. Take notice though the gpp is different for all bows since I used the same arrow and they were a range of draw weights all pulled to 28 in unless otherwise noted. I shot the bows at different angles then recorded the average farthest distance.

60in Hickory selfbow, rawhide backed, 57@27 (drawn 27). 175 yrds

66in Bear Kodiak Special 46@28. 200 yards

62in Martin Hatfield 55@28. 240 yards

56in Hickory selfbow, rawhide backed, 50@26 (drawn 27). 161 yards

Hickory flatbow, rawhide backed, 60@28. 188 yards

Bear Grizzly (70-72 model) 50@28. 205 yards

52in Ben Pearson, 55@28. 215 yards

70in Howard Hill Big Five, 60@28. 220 yards

60in Ben Pearson all fiberglass, 35#. 151 yards

48in Osage selfbow 40@22 (drawn 22in). 134 yards

56in Sinew Backed Hickory 61@25 (drawn 25). 195 yards

62in Hickory flat bow, 60@26 (drawn 26). 172 yards

62in Wapiti TD recurve, 54@28. 240 yards

NEXT ARE FF String BOWS

60in Bear super Kodiak, 57@28. 220 yards

62in Wilderness longbow, 53@28. 200 yards

64in Wapiti Recurve, 55@28. 250 yards

60in Checkmate falcon recurve 48@28. 203 yards

60in Great Plains TD, 48@28. 237 yards

60in Predator TD 55@28. 270 yards. (190's on chrono)

62in Widow SA, 54@28. 268 yards.

62in Bob Lee TD recurve, 52@28. 228 yards

62in Wapiti TD recurve, 50@28. 235 yards

62in Widow MA, 43@28, 230 yards

Kyphil, I like how you keep your records, I always figure it takes about 200 fps to reach 300 yards on a good day with a slight breeze at your back. The 330 yard 50# record held by Don Brown is one that impresses me the most.

I would say your right because the furthest I got was from a Predator and it was around 195 fps. I always have a hard time getting a selfbow to reach or go past 200 yards. Maybe I just haven't built an efficient bow yet. I seem to recall a 66" osage that was 60@26 that got very close but that was 60 pounds, I could do achieve it with one around 50. Even though they had plenty of power it was always in the back of mind.

Meant to say could not achieve it with one around 50 pounds.

I really enjoy following these informal flight shots with different bows, arrows, draws lengths, and archers. I would like to see more! It inspires me keep a tally on my own flight shots over the past 11 years.

I will freely share any of my "secrets" to getting the most distance out of a given bow and arrow combination. It is mostly taking care of the details. Tuning is key. All the good practices to tune a good target bow apply to flight shooting. Use thin vanes & elevated rest for the arrows on modern recurves. Use thinnest feathers for shooting off the shelf with longbows or primitive bows. Turkey feathers are thick and act like air brakes. I often use pheasant tail feathers. The string can make a big difference too. Regardless of the string material, I spend a lot of time making sure the tension is perfectly even on every strand of my endless loop strings. I keep center serving to a minimum. A stiffer arrow tuned for more center shot is going to wiggle less, and fly further than a softer arrow tuned for less centershot. There are so many parameters to play with which keeps it fun and interesting.

Alan

Looks like a great way to spend some time. JaWGE

Proper tuning is a huge aspect, I imagine less available spots to shoot and tune your bows and arrows has played apart in less flight shooters today. If I was a bit younger I would move some place I could shoot more flight.

Thank you Badger, KyPhil and Alan for those insights. I think it's worth saying again, as I have in earlier threads, that the testing I'm doing isn't really flight shooting, in which you try and optimize all parameters, even including body English upon release, to achieve maximum distance.

I think all that I'm doing is trying to remove as many variables as I can, in order to simply isolate bow performance. In theory, if you shoot different makes of bows but can keep the draw weight, draw length, arrows, strings, angle, and release identical... then you can begin to say something about the relative efficiencies of the two bows.

Furthermore, even if you prove to yourself that Bow A is more efficient than Bow B... well, that's all you've managed to prove. Plenty of guys have written laments about foolishly parting with beautiful, sweet-shooting, accurate bows just because they had a spell of the chronograph crazies and decided a bow wasn't "fast enough." That's just silly!

Sure it's fun to evaluate performance, but that's just one quality of a bow. Things like beauty, shootability, accuracy, silence, sentiment, historic significance, and your own personal connections to the bow are each just as much a part of the bow's worth as is speed/cast. BUT... it sure is sweet when you find one (or more) that fires on ALL cylinders for you!

Crookedstix, I lke the aspect of flight shooting that you are doing. I have been trying to get a league going where we shot at about 10 grains per pound but not much interest. Tim baker summed it up well when he said whats the point when you have a chrono. I have more fun shooting for distance.

I may have to drive north some weekend and let you try my #52 Jack Howard Gamemaster Jet out, and see how it compares to the rest of your bows / distances. It would be interesting!

hey, allan and steve! this is an interesting thread and i have enjoyed it. am in the middle of tension band workout to prep for this fall. trying to pump myself up! better get back at it. larry

Larry, I think tomorrow I will go buy some of those tension bands. My draw strength has been dropping fast the last few years. Not shooting enough. I lost my backyard archery range about 4 years ago and it has been downhill since.

they sure work. i use from 60# up and this evening i did 100 reps with each arm using my body as well as my arms. keeps everything working. have to go slow on actual weight i'm pulling with my arms until i build back some.

Shafted, That would be a lot of fun! That 52# Jack Howard would tuck in nicely around some of my bows in terms of weight-- between the Monterey and T-Bird pulling 51# each, an Ocala at 54#, and a Tim Meigs recurve that's rated at 54# but that I haven't put on a scale yet. We could have quite a clash of the titans!

I think I've also gotta talk Pdiddly out of that 59# Safari II that he owns, so I can compare it to the Drake and the Saber. All of those early Brownings are basically just Drake bows built by Gordon Glass, and they shoot like the devil. Trouble is, he's a crafty old Canuck and would want something good in exchange for it... this international trade is tricky business.

Alan, I especially liked your comment about turkey feathers acting like air brakes. You really see that when you compare a turkey-fletched shaft to a vane-fletched one; it makes a difference of thirty or forty yards just in that one parameter.

I can also see that I need to bite the bullet and learn more about tuning... sometimes I'll see an arrow still porpoising a bit 30 or 40 yards away from the bow, and if that's happening then it's giving me misleading information about the bow's true potential; i.e. the bow stored more energy than my erratic flight is giving it credit for.

Hmmm... further testing is required. Maybe I should try and get a grant for this stuff, heheh...

What is a good source for flight shooting? These threads have always gotten my interest. My hunting buddies and I did our own version of flight shooting one afternoon. We had a field adjacent to our deer camp scattered with rolled hay bales. I am the only guy in the group that shoots trad gear. One of the guys pointed out a hay bale and asked if my recurve would reach that far. I said no problem. I reached it and then some. That evolved into an hour of fun testing our bows against each other. One guy had an old compound, my son had a modern, for that time, compound. The results were as expected. We paced off the distances, but I don't remember the specifics other than the differences were obvious. Every year after that the field was planted with corn. No more flight shooting. Our home grown version of shooting was to shoot from the same spot holding the bow at what we thought was a 45 degree angle. I assume the optimum angle would be the same fo any projectile? Judging from this thread the same thing holds true for flight shooting as many other endeavors. The devil is in the details. BTW the bow I was shooting was a Hatfield takedown.

Don't forget the Eleveated rest, it helps a lot in getting arrow out straight and faster. When comparing the modern long bows to the field recurves in flight we see about 90 yards difference in the broadhead records. smaller plastic vanes, elevated rests and a difference of 100 grains in arrow weight explains a big part of this 90 yards as well as thin carbon arrows.

Cat sailor, Flight shooting info is scattered all over the place. We used to have a message board that covered all types of flight archery, but that disappeared several years ago. There is a facebook page or two that will pop up if you search for "flight archery". There is also a sub-category on a couple of the primitive archery sites, but it is limited to natural material only bows and arrows.

Crookedstix, I often enjoy tinkering around with a standard bow to see how many yards I can get out of it. It is fun and I find I benefit in other forms of archery from what I learn in flight shooting. I would like to see more give it a try with their regular go-to bows and arrows on here. I will try to do more of the same. I hope to hold an informal fun-flight shoot here near Portland, Oregon in the next couple of months. I expect we will be limited in space, so it will be shooting similar bows and arrows as you are.

Larry, It is good to hear you are working the strength bands. I think you are just starting to enter your best years of flight archery!

Alan

I agree, Alan; it's just plain fun as well as instructive. For instance, I have two bows that scale at exactly 49.13 pounds for my 29-1/4" draw: a 62" 1955 Eicholtz Venus, with woven glass backing, and a 1974 Browning Explorer 1 that's 56"long. When I shoot the same arrows with those bows, you can bet there are some obvious differences-- it's like a quick history lesson of how far recurves came in 20 years. In fact, my 1965 Browning Safari II, which is 47# at my draw, will also outshoot the old 49# Eicholtz by a country mile... AND that same Safari will ALMOST outshoot a 2013 Bob Lee that pulls 56#!! I don't say this to slam the Eicholtz or the Bob Lee, but rather to make the point that the progress made in the late Fifties and early Sixties was just tremendous.

It's also great fun to try different arrows from the same bow-- to watch a 465-grain Forgewood go zipping about twenty yards past a 440-grain modern Port Orford cedar arrow; or to see the huge difference that vanes make compared to feathers. That's one good reason right there to prefer flight shooting to a chronograph-- both arrows would have about the same "muzzle velocity" on a chrono, but if you let 'em fly for a few seconds the whole story plays out.

I'm a firm believer in what Rick Barbee is always saying and doing-- don't just spoout and speculate; take it out in your own back yard and see for yourself what happens!

Hey Kerry! Up at my camp in Northern Ontario for a week... just checked "The Wall" on my BB and saw you were lusting after my 59# Safari!

It is actually a 54" Safari I, not a II, but if that's not a deal breaker we can figure out a way to send it east for flight tests.

Really enjoying this thread and everyone's comments!

I wish I could fling a few arrows into the great wide open up here but it's all bush. Too bad as I have my '66 Explorer that scales 58#...it sure cranks an arrow!

My reflex/ deflex "Enigma" has also proven to be a real performer...those power lams sure work! I'll try and post some pics.

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