FOC

[joetapley]

What my club does is move outdoor straw bosses indoors when the middle has gone. As you're shooting around the periphery you get more useage out of the target and as they are already 'run in' they are not rock hard. Compounds are as usual a problem so double up on the bosses. Provides an arrow friendly target and no pass through problens.

A club is not being very sensible as regards archers' arrows if it uses stramit targets for day to day use.

[Marcus26]

Our club uses stramit indoors because:
• For the amount of shooting it gets it lasts the longest (16 lanes shot on 5 days/nights a week with around 200 arrows per round)
• Because we only need to replace it every 2 years it is the cheapest option. Foam, bag and straw butts only lasted around 3 months each
• Because we layer the targets on their side even as they get shot out they remain flat, unlike straw, bag and foam butts
• For those who don't liek stramit we also provide 2 bag targets with cardboard frontage, these require repairing every 3 months

Outdoors we have pulled out our 18 stramit targets and replaced with 34 portable targets with shrink wrap cores that protect the arrows and allow easy extraction. They require monthly maintainance despite having nowhere near the number of arrows shot into them that our indoor range does.

While I personaly hate stramit we have not found anything better for our indoor range, which is considered the best in Australia.
(it looks so small in this photo)

[joetapley]

While I personaly hate stramit we have not found anything better for our indoor range, which is considered the best in Australia.

Very swish - how the other half lives! With a permanent range a stramit wall makes sense. My club hires a school gym one night per week during the 3 winter school terms

[Marcus26]

Yeah there would be no way we would do it if we hired a hall. I think I would go the Denage targets if we hired, otherwise recycling outdoor butts sounds like a good plan as you suggested.

[Frommy]

Ah! The Diamond Valley Archers, commonly known as DVA Hilton.

Joe, not all clubs over here have facilities like this, mate. :( I have not been to DVA, but fellow club members who have, for our last Nationals, still talk about the great facilities Marcus and the club members have established. (Difficulty in stopping drool from dripping on keyboard)
:o

Marcus, also interesting to read your experiences with heavily shot shrink wrap filled butts as used at DVA for the Ozzie Nats. We have designed our field course butts on the same principles as DVA (in fact we copied them almost exactly), and they worked fine last weekend. They will also be used for the NSW Field in a few months.

Hhhhmmmmm. Now thinking that Frommy should move remaining comments to another forum, like in Oz. ;)

[joetapley]

Comments above suggest that my introduction to understanding FOC is as clear as pea soup (mea culpa ).
Ok if at first you don't succeed..

Have put up a some words about FOC for the mechanically challenged. It's not an actual description about FOC and arrow flight but aimed at getting the penny to drop (at least a few centimetres) that FOC is relevant to how an arrow flies.

you can see my effort at <a href = "http://homepage.ntlworld.com/joetapley/foc2.htm">FOC</a>

Would appreciate any feedback. If it works I can use it as an introduction to the topic.

Thanks