The last few weeks has seen a large turnover of archery kit in our household, mainly due to Christmas and two birthdays (mine and EA jnr). Mrs EA has also upgraded.
So what has changed for me? Santa Claus brought me a backpack case to replace the hard case I had inherited from Mrs EA, and an Easton quiver and belt to replace the cast-off I had been using. The backpack case now holds all of my kit except the quiver (as I don't want to fold it) and seems to make bow assembly and disassembly more efficient. I no longer have to go scrabbling around in a separate bag for my stand or sight, and the integral arrow tube means one less thing to carry.
The end of January sees my birthday on the 29th and EA jnr's birthday on the 30th. Mrs EA gifted me a pair of limbs bought second-hand from eBay and I received some cash gifts that have gone towards buying a new set of arrows and a new button. The button is a Shibuya DX and the limbs are SF Premium Carbon limbs with a nominal draw weight of 28lbs, a small increase on the 24lb limbs I have been using since the start of the last summer season. Before fitting the new limbs, I measured the actual draw weight of my bow with the old limbs and found it to be 29lb. This sounds high, but the riser limb bolts were adjusted right in and I do have a longer draw than the nominal 28". I adjusted the limb bolts right out before putting on the new limbs and found that the new draw weight was 30lb - not very different to what I am used to but with plenty of scope for increasing over the next few months.
The arrows were ordered as components: 10x Easton ACC 3-04 shafts cut to 28.5", 80g parabolic points, red/white/blue EP16 vanes and white Easton G-nocks (small). The delivery of the arrow components turned into a saga of problems, with some items being out of stock, wrong points being sent and used items being sent out as new. The retailer has held up his hands and been very apologetic, to the point of losing a couple of staff for incompetence. I am still waiting for a couple of items, but I know that this is out of his control and I did have enough components to make a usable set of arrows.
I shot the ACCs for the first time indoors this week without adjusting my bow, and was really quite pleased with the result. The flatter trajectory was apparent as I had to adjust my sight up from my previous sight mark for 20yds. This weekend I intend to fit my new button and go through the exercise of tuning the bow properly, maybe slightly increasing the draw weight. Once that is done I will need to get new sight marks for all distances again!
EA jnr has undergone an even more radical change - he is now shooting a compound bow rather than recurve. Aged 14, he has more growing to do so it was important to get a bow that can grow with him, but that he will not outgrow too soon. We sought the advice of Dave, a very experienced compound archer at our club and we independently decided that a Mission Menace bow seemed a good choice. Along with the bow, we bought a second-hand sight through the Archery Equipment for Sale UK group (thanks, Jon!) and a release aid and scope from Dave. Dave also donated a bow bag that had been cluttering the loft (or so he says), and gave up his Saturday morning set the bow up properly.
This left EA jnr's recurve kit redundant, so we offered it as a complete set to one of the club's new juniors, who was delighted to leave the field totally equipped.
Finally, Mrs EA bought a new set of limbs (the same type as mine but shorter and higher poundage) and a used Win&Win Winact riser from another club member. She is still getting used to the new setup and has yet to reach the same level of performance she had reached before the change.
I think that is going to be it on the equipment front for a while, unless I start doing the lottery!
