Well, after reading about the hype – I had to try these Aerovane II fletches from Firenock. (www.firenock.com_) They arrived while I was in Florida, but waited very patiently for me to return and get them mounted on an arrow! Firenock is not a sponsor of mine, I bought these, and am under no influence from Firenock to say anything good about this product. That said, I must admit that I have huge expectations and will say wonderful things if the testing works out favorably! I just want you to know that if this does not live up to the hype, I will say so…
First impressions:
I tried to order this in colors, firenock had posted that colors would be available after a certain date – his entire stock was sold out! So I got the white ones, which I was told could be made any color by applying a sharpie of what ever color I wanted. The material is supposed to take sharpie ink very well. I tried green… I takes a while to do, a long while to do enough for a dozen arrows, and the end result was not all that great. Maybe I need a fresh sharpie, one with a bit more ink in it! I quit at less than half a fletch, and do not recommend trying to sharpie your white fletching. There are better things to do with your time! The molding of the fletch is obviously very design specific, but does not stand out if you are more than a short distance away. At close inspection, you can see that there is something else going on here! The molding is exotic. When I look at the molding, I wonder a bit about several sharp edges, basically at the base of the start of the owl wing design, and how durable it will be when it comes to flying through bale after bale! We shall see. Another note, I fletch everything right wing. My broadheads are set up for right wing. No where on the package (that I saw anyway) does it say which way this fletch will turn the arrow – CW or CCW. My guess is that the ones sent to me will shoot just like the “right wing” mounted plastic fletching. Again, we’ll see! I have single bevel heads, Blitz heads, and Nightmares that are all set up for right wing mounted fletching… Before ordering these, I talked with Firenock a bit on the phone for a few more details. It was a great conversation, and one of the details to come out of it was that in order to get the most benefit from this product, the bow shooting the arrow must have zero nock travel through the draw and release. I asked about my bow, a Bowtech 101st, and was told that regarding nock travel it is a fairly good bow, meaning little nock travel, and easily tuned up. Sloppy nock travel can, apparently, negate or reduce the benefits of the product. The chief benefit of interest to me is the effects in big wind! It is supposed to greatly reduce the effects of a crosswind on the shaft. It should turn faster, and take less energy from the shaft to turn it, resulting in flatter trajectory at 40 yards.
Challenges:
The brass bar to help with installation was bent. I had to straighten it. Not told specifically up front, the bar has to be glued to your jig to be used effectively.
Once mounted, it appears that a standard plastic fletch can still be used with the same clamp. HOWEVER – once you glue the bar to your jig, it introduces an offset to the centerline where the fletching sits on the shaft. This put the base of the fletch off the shaft! To be fair, I am not using a Bitz clamp, rather a straight clamp by another company – I don’t remember who made it and there is no indication on the clamp - but I have used it before for straight fletch mounts. It is plastic, and the edges of the clamp are rounded, this meant that I could not mount the brass bar right up to the edge of the clamp, due to the radius. So, I had to mount the bar back a bit from the edge… This caused another issue, the bar was to deep in the clamp to allow the fletching to stick out enough to glue. SO – I had to sand the edge of the clamp down until the fit was right.
By the way, the brass bar is required because of the molding of the fletch itself. If you look at the cross-section, you will see the shape of the owls wing, the brass bar fits nicely between the base of the fletch and the start of the owls wing curvature.
It holds the fletch very snug during mounting! Without the bar, the base could move all over during the glue up. I tried to place the fletch and bar together in the clamp without gluing the bar in, good luck.
I found that my Bitz jig did not have enough adjustment to compensate for this offset, and ended up modifying the base adjustments of the magnet clamp.
The white edge between the shaft and clamp is the edge of the base of the fletch, note it is off the shaft slightly. I am, at this point, out of adjustment!
I got it to work, but am still a bit above shaft center and it involved taking my Bitz apart and going at the adjustment slots with a dremel drill grinder. Kind of a mess, and took a bit of time. Maybe if one uses the Bitz clamp all this fuss is not required!
Clamp modifications resulted in these pics:
Glue on the brass bar -
Sand the whole works flat, and gain the clearance needed for the base edges of the fletch -
So, after modifying the clamp twice, the jig base once, I am ready to mount fletches to the shaft! I am going to glue up three shafts, with 30 grain adapter screws to give me a bit extra FOC, and three normally fletched shafts the same.
I will use 100 grain tips, should come in around 470 to 480 grains, plus or minus a bit depending on how much glue I put on them! We will then go to the range and see what happens. Probably won’t happen until this weekend though! I hope the wind is blowing hard!
Here we are, first arrow! The glues used are Gorilla Super Glue gel, and NPV Arrow Mate Cement. The jig is a bitzenburger.
One arrow to another - Aerovane II and standard 4" plastic fletching:
The Aerovane II is a bit taller than the standard plastic fletch -
Once I get out to shoot a few rounds, I'll post the followup!
