Why are plastic vanes used instead of feathers?
A lot of manufacturer (and archers) state that feathers are better in all respects. For example a quote from Trueflight:
Using feathers results in higher arrow velocities, greater stability, better guidance, higher accuracy and more forgiving flight.
Why do most olympic archers, compounders etc. still use plastic vanes?
Some clarification for laypersons:
You can either have natural feathers or artifical plastic feathers on your arrow. Latter are called "vanes".
The first arrow has natural feathers while the lower arrow uses vanes.
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An arrow's fletching should balance between providing good spin and minimizing drag. See the video here.
Feathers:
- Superior in-flight characteristics: recede well at high airspeed (decreases drag) while springing back exponentially as airspeed decreases (increases stability)
- Lighter weight
- Higher arrow speed [1]
- More forgivingly slides past risers and rests
- Easier to tune
- When wet, provide less to no spin
- More expensive
Vanes (plastic)
- Not affected by water or most weather
- More durable than feathers
- Less expensive
- Rigidity of vanes causes launch variances brushing past rests
- Harder to tune, but less variance between similar vanes than between similar feathers
- Flexibility changes with temperature
The advantages of vanes probably call to many: cheaper and more predictable. I could not find a reason why Olympic competitors use vanes. Maybe it is an Olympic requirement?
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/13750. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Artificial vanes are heaps more durable than feathers and being artificial, they are weather resistant.
One of the things I most see in the field on a wet day is long bowers covering arrows with a plastic bag because they won't fly well if feathers get wet.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/13727. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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