I just got back from the Bonneville Salt Flats where we hold our annual international flight shooting competition. This year I think 10 adult archers showed up, we are a dying breed. Ideally suited for smart, dedicated analytical problem solver types. Ask anything you like. My specialty is the primitive classes but we have classes for all types of bows.
I’ll be first up …
What, exactly, are you talking about?
What kind of equipment do you use? Are there categories such as longbow, composite bow, crossbow, etc. or can you use whatever you want?
How does one get involved with flight archery? Are there organized training programs, certifications, recognized skill levels, etc. or is it very informal?
You pretty well described the equipment. We have classes for modern american longbows, field recurves, flight recurves, English longbows, all natural or primitibe bows in 3 classes, self bows ( one piece of wood) simple composite 2 materials or complex composite any number of natural materials. We als have classes for the old turkish style horn bows where the famous sultan made the 847 yard or so shot.
The formula 1 for flight archery is what is called the regular flight bows, usually very short recurves where the tiny arrows are shot through key holes and they have forward attached handles for more leverage. Some of the crossbows and footbows have reached distances of more than a mile. I would imagine there are less than a dozen in the world today actively working on the regular flight bows.
These bows have ahieved distances of well over 1 mile.
The rules for each class of bows regarding styles of bows, arrows and how the bow is set up greatly affect distances achieved.
We are part of the american archery association and fall under the same guidelines as the olympic archers. measuring distances and classifying bows is held to strict guidelines.
We usually have archers from other parts of the world show up each year. This year we had a Chinese archer and a hungarian archer. The hungarian archer put on an impressive display and broke I think 4 world records. He was very strong and shot in the unlimited weight classes. He wasn't very big, ( under 200# ) I would guess.
As far as getting involvd goes I would imagine the easiest way would be to join a flight archery facebook page and start reading and asking questions. Newcomers are welcomed and old timers are happy to help one get started. I broke a world record my first year out.
Isn’t ‘flight archery’ kinda redundant? Is there an archery that doesn’t involve flight?
The only target in flight archery is the ground as far away from the archer as possible. So we have target arhery and flight archery.
Have you ever taken part in Clout Archery? - same sort of high-shooting method, but the objective is to land your arrows as close as possible to a distant flag.
Ah nice. My brother mentioned that he knows some dude who’s always going on and on about how far he reaches, Bro will like to know there’s a name for that.
I do on occassion attend a montly clout shooting event on Los Angeles. It is good preperation for flight shooting as fligth shooters are penalized for being "
off line"
In the one form of long distance rifle shooting I used to do, where on the paper you hit didn’t count. The goal was smallest sized group of three shots.
Anything like that in long distance archery?
Offficially I know of nothing like that but tight groups at a few hundrd yards away do get our attentionand much discussion. One year I was shooting a bow for broadhead distance ( heavy hunting arrows) and put all 6 arrows in a circle slightly larger than a hoola hoop at about 225 yards. that was by far the tightest group of arrows I have ever seen shot at a 45 degree elevation. It is not unusual to our arrow spread out by 30 yards or so. It would be an interesting aspect to look at and be helpful in training flight archers to use consistent form.
What is actually the best elevation given an average 80 degree day and slight head wind? Around 38 more? How much do conditions play into the equation (of elevation) when going flat-out for max distance?
Flight shooting is always laid out with the wind at our backs, it will shift on occasion to a slight headwind and yes about 38 degrees is what most of us figure for that. A strong tailwind and we usually shoot a bit over 45 degrees.
Clases that use very light arrows usually prefer a very slight tailwind to no wind at all, where classes that shoot heavy arrows prefer strong tailwinds. Anything that can disturb the straight flight of an arrow creates more drag and will quickly negate any benefits from a tailwind. Heavy arrows are more stable and have a lower ratio of drag coeficient to mass weight of the arrow and tend to benefit more from tailwinds.
What’s the world record?
Huh, I wish I’d known it was going on; I live in Salt Lake City and would love to have come out and watched!
Footbow record. 2,028 yards, set by Harry Drake 1971
Crossbow Record 2,047 yards set by Harry Drake 1988
Hand Held regular flight bow record, 1,336 yards set by Don Brown 1987
For the crossbow record, how much of that is due to the man’s skill and how much is due to the machinery he’s holding? I’m betraying my ignorance here, but is there any skill to shooting a crossbow besides “pull the trigger well”?
The big challenge with the crossbow lies in the design of the bow and the arrow. Building a bow that will store up sufficient energy is pretty straight forward. Capturing that energy and efficiently transferring it to the arrow is a big part of the challenge. And then you have the problem of designing an arrow that will maintain as much of that energy as possible down range. In the 70’s and 80’s razor blades were often used for feltchings on the arrows, now we are using floppy disk material. The arrows are made from tapered solid carbon rods about 4mm in diameter approx 14" long. I don’t shoot these particular classes but I believe the arrows are weighing in at about 60 to 70 grains, about 1/8 the weight of a normal hunting arrow.