VANES: THREE OF THE BEST

INTRODUCTION

Whether we're shopping online or in store we are affronted by hundreds of vanes of all sizes and shapes. This can often lead to option paralysis. The confusion leads a lot of archers of all levels to make poor decisions when it comes to making a purchase. Having a basic grasp of a few key facts and physics principles will put you in a position where you'll be able to short list your new vane candidates.

Incidentally, you might prefer to call them fletchings - and that's fine too. Fletchings is a much older word and is more commonly used in Britain, whereas vanes is the universal term in North America and much of the rest of the world. North America is where a lot of them are made these days, and we've decided to call them vanes throughout this article for consistency.

Before considering the merits of vanes it's essential to understand what their function actually is. Vanes stabilise, steer, spin and dampen the oscillation of the arrow. Just like the tail section of an aircraft, the vanes are flight control surfaces that control yaw (side to side) and pitch (up and down) of the arrow in order to produce stabilised level flight. These are just a few of the terms that will get bundled together to form the subject of aerodynamics. Although this is a very complex subject we can distil everything down into a few