[joetapley]

Geoff

Historically (as far as I know) there have been two suggestions put forward as to what this "tuning" thing essentially is. The first suggestion was by Don Rabska in the Easton Maintenance/Tuning Guide. The suggestion was that it was to do with the launch alignment of the arrow i.e. you tried to minimise the airflow angle of attack on the shaft at launch. The second suggestion was put forward by me several years ago. I hopefully showed that while the arrow launch alignment idea was going in the right direction it didn't really "fly" and the underlying issue of tuning was to do with the rotational energy that the arrow had at launch. This concept mechanically/aerodynamically agrees with "tuning experience" as regards explaining how the various tuning methods work, why tuning is a function of target distance and predicts that tuning is also a function of wind (the latter idea according to the Heretic Archer has now received some verification by testing).

If you understand the mechanics/aerodynamics of arrow flight behaviour it becomes obvious why with a compound bow at 18m that whether shooting X10s or broom handles all the arrows will go in the ten ring. It does not discredit the bare shaft tuning concept.