The Need for Speed

aroney@bowcast.com — Sun, 04 May 2008 20:39:01 +0100

The weekend kicked off with a batchelor party for my good friend. We met at [[Coors Field]] for a Rockies game, and that ended with about 30 police officers escorting the entire batchelor party out of the stadium....more on that in another blog entry.

I did get some shooting/testing in this weekend. I was thrown for a couple of loops on the range today. Here goes ....

Quest 33 Arrows had good elevation at 20 yards, but I noticed I was clicking about an inch to the right. Not sure what was going on there. The last time I shot was through paper, so I am assuming I just had my sight off a bit when we were playing around. Anyway, couple of clicks of the Sure-Loc, and everything was back in order.I headed out with the last sight tape I printed off of Archer's Advantage. Things were fine until I started focusing on 50 yards. Wind picked up a bit, and I couldn't get a round off arrows to fly consistent. I was clicking in a 3 inch circle, but just not the same place....kept going round after round until I started to notice I was getting WAY off the left (like 8 inches off). I was stumped for a couple of rounds until I looked down at my sight and the 3rd Axis bolt was loose...the entire housing was moveable back and forth. I eye-balled it back and tightened it down....all was good again.
Katera
This was really the first time I shot any distance with the Katera this year. 20 yards was spot on. To my disbelief, 30 and 40 yards were clicking as well. I have some minor windage issues, but I thought my main focus with this bow today was going to be to adjust elevation....no need - didn't touch a pin on the G5 Optima XR sight.

Once the wind got unbearable (and my arms were starting to lose it with those 80 lb limbs), I headed down to the Sportsman's Warehouse in [[Aurora, CO]] to run both these bows through a chronograph. I was very interested in seeing what going with 80lb limbs was going to buy me. Keep in mind, I have not done any real "speed tuning". Basically this is out of the box, cranked down a bit (Quest is at 76 lbs and Katera is at 73 lbs currently). The results of the Chronograph:

Quest 33 - 271 fps

Katera - 286 fps

Now Chronographs can be finicky, so I don't take either of these measurements as the gospel....but I am very happy with those results. I'll do a little more tinkering to figure out if those speeds are actually accurate.

Came back home and entered those speeds into Archery's Advantage software to see what kind of Kinetic Energy I was getting. The results:

G5 Quest 33 - 61 ft-lb @ 80 yards

Hoyt Katera - 55.6 ft-lb @ 80 yards

Hmmm.....Katera is faster but has less Kinetic Energy. Interesting, don't you think?

More soon.

Aneal

[...]

Pimpin My Ride(s) - Part 2

aroney@bowcast.com — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:58:49 +0100

As I mentioned in my last entry, I was very happy with my initial setup of my Quest 33 bow and Sure-Loc Max ST sight. Now I was moving on to setting up my other bow - a Hoyt Katera.

I went down to visit my good buddy (and Archery Guru) Matt Hogue at my local Sportsman's Warehouse in Littleton, CO. We got to work completing the following tasks:

< ul>Took my NAP Quicktune 4000 rest off an old bow I had setup and transferred it to the Katera.Mounted a new G5 Optima XR sight onto the KateraLeft the factory Hoyt string on the Katera to test it out. Depending on the next couple of months of testing, I will either switch it out with a G5 Metrao string or a Winner's Choice.Set center shot and nock point
Paper tuned

All went pretty much according to plan with setup. We did notice that it looked like there was some internal wear on my NAP Quicktune 4000. I have hunted with that rest for 3 seasons, so that is to be expected. What was going on was while the rest was dropping away with good timing, it didn't seem to drop ALL the way down, and was stopping about 1/8 inch from the shelf. I kept it on to get comfortable with shooting the bow.

In addition, I have switched over from Gold Tip Arrows to Easton Full Metal Jackets which have a smaller diameter. So we played with the "forks" on the Quicktune to get them to hug the arrow a little better.

I shot 4 arrows through paper and all but 1 (which was probably my form) were perfect bullet holes (Good job eye-balling Matt!). So great news there. The other news is I will probably go through this all again when I decide to purchase a new rest. I have the G5 Expert II rest on my Quest bow, so I am looking for some ideas on what to use on the Katera (limited by those rests that actually work with a Hoyt). Does anyone shooting a Hoyt have a favorite rest to recommend? Add a comment to this post and let me know.

Next, I'll jump back to my Quest bow and see if I can dial in the speed and sight on that bow. More soon.....

Shoot Straight!

Aneal

[...]

Blog Entries tagged 'Katera'

The Need for Speed

Pimpin My Ride(s) - Part 2