I got back to the range today. Finally I can lift and draw the bow again. Tomorrow might be a different story but today I was ok. I played it safe and quit early too. Once I started to feel like I was spraying and praying I packed it up. Tomorrow I am going to work on getting my anchor finger tight in against my jaw bone. I can do it really nicely with the rubber strap but not with the bow. Maybe my schnoz is too big?

Cel phones and toilets

I knew I should have backed up the data on my kei-tai (japanese for cel phone). At least I should have before I dropped it in the toilet :( Yuck! Luckily it fell in BEFORE I...well you know what I mean.

And ignore that last post. I was on the poor me boat because I hurt my neck and couldn't shoot for a few days. I'm past that now. If I can't shoot, I'll strum my guitar.

Back to square one.

Once again I will enter a competion unprepared. Without practicing it seems pointless to even try. So again as with SCUBA and guitar and tennis and offroad riding archery is DEAD! Every time I find somthing that I feel I can be good at with some practice life gets in the way. Perhaps because I feel guilty about taking the time to practice. Maybe thats the secret? Should I just be more selfish with my time? Work takes up 12 hours a day so with 5 to 6 hours of sleep that leaves 4 to 5 hours a day for family, friends and hobby. Is that enough time to EXCEL at anything?

What the heck?

I just don't know what to say... I saw this advertisment for this product in a super market. I have no idea what they are selling here.

Cupid was an archer right?

So it's the day after Valentines Day here. I have to tell you that V day here is very different from back home. Do you remember in Elementary school where you made a heart shaped envelope and put your name on it at the front of the class and anyone could slip you a Valentines card with out anyone else spotting them at it? Well that's how I remember it in grades k-4 anyhow. I can remember getting and giving little notes with "will you be my valentine?" on them from both boys and girls and it was ok because it just meant "let's be friends". Cute.
Now that I'm here in Japan I, as a man have no obligation to hand out chocolates or cards or anything for Valentines Day. Girls on the other hand are obliged to pass out treats to the guys and lots of girls spend the days before Val Day making truffles or cookies to pass out on the big day. As a teacher I have been the lucky recipient of "tons" of sweets in the past years. This year however my students weren't quite as generous as in the past. Blame the economy or the fact that the 14th was a Saturday this year I guess. I got a few but the sweetest were from my wife and my daughter. Thank you girls.
Since I'm a romantic I took the chance to take my two best girls to a fancy french restaurant. What a great date. Good food, good wine, and a quiet smoke free dinner with two beautiful young ladies.

Today I didn't get to shoot again but I spent some time refletching my arrows. I'm going to try the new aluminum again with 2 degs. of right offset. That ought to get them really spinning.

Got my 140 arrows in today but I tell you it wasn't pretty. I couldn't feel my back in the shots. I couldn't keep my bow hand up after the first 20 shots. What a mess. I think there is a difference between shooting quickly and shooting in a hurry. I might do better to keep my shooting to after work or before work but not between classes. See what happens tomorrow right?

Well...best laid plans right? I thought I was going to get a chance to practice today but business got in the way. Bummer. So tomorrow I'll just have to shoot 300 arrows LOL

Inspiration

Inspired by my Korean archery "blog pal" I have decided that I am going to take my training to the next level. Now that I have some arrows and a lighter weight bow I can start. Well actually I started today. I shot 150 arrows at 18m and a couple more at 30m this morning. I went to the range with that goal in mind but I was doubtful that I could do it in the 2 hours I had. To save time, I shot ends of 14 arrows including the bareshafts. I tried to keep my pace to under 10 seconds per arrow counting from the time I put my tab on the string to release. I didn't think it was practical to count from the time I drew an arrow from my quiver. Just wanted to keep a pace without stressing myself.
I have two sets of arrows that are compatible with the 30# limbs. Redline 690's and Platinum Plus 1816's. Well the PP's will work better once I cut 1/2" off them. Now If I keep this pace of 150 arrows a day for a week I think I'll have a good start to building my form and getting my bow arm in shape. There is a FITA 18m event in Yokaichi on the 8th of March but there is also a beginners taiken class at my club on the same weekend. Not sure what I should do.

A new nickname

I came up with a new nickname for our daughter last week.
LITTLE BIG HUG
She is so small but her hug is so powerful!

Fun with tuning.

So before Christmas I went through a period of questioning my form and setup. I decided to buy some new limbs in a lighter weight and longer length. The limbs I was using were Everest Pro Medium size 38#. I was doing ok with them untill the summer when I went home and didn't train for 3 weeks straight. When I got back I was not pleased. Since my 38# EP's were set to thier absolute lightest setting I didn't have any lee way in tuning my bow to my arrows. And I was still holding 42# on my fingers. So I reasoned that buying some lighter limbs would give me some more adjustablity. I found a set of Long 36# EP's. Now once I got those lighter limbs I found I could draw a bit further and have my elbow in-line with the arrow. Also the longer limbs are lighter on the fingers since the string angle is larger at full draw. I shot a PB of 528 indoors with them. Since I added an inch and a bit to my draw my draw weight increased and I am back at 42.8#'s. I don't feel that this is an unrealistic weight for me but I've been advised by some people on line to get some light limbs to help me re-build my form from the ground up. I got a set of Samick Mizar 30# Longs from a friend and bought 6 PP xx75 1816's. I stuck some BIG vanes on 3 of them and left 3 bare. Then it was of to the range to "tune-up". first shots were low and left so I adjusted my elevation. Then loosened the plunger untill I got them hitting the gold at 18m. Then I tried the bare shafts so I oculd set the nocking point. I wrapped the bare shafts with tape to make the weight of the bare and fletched equal. At 18m they were hitting fairly close so I thought I'll try them at 30m. Wow!! what a shock! The F.S. grouped really well at 30m but the bareshafts cruised out about half way to the target looking good and then woooosh the suckers looked like they hit a cross wind and sailed up and right to land 5 feet above the target!! Within 5 inches of each other but WAY off target.
Seems I put twice as much tape as I needed so instead of balancing them with 15 grains of tape to egual the vanes. I had 30 grains on them. Tomorrow I'm going to see how this little experiment works with half that on the end.

Yea Baby,
Today I didn't have much time for shooting, as usual, so I decided to do a little tuning. On Monday I tried the same thing but couldn't get good results. Now I know why. I was trying to setup my nocking point by shooting bare and fletched shafts and comparing their points of impact. If the Bare is higher than the fletched then you have to raise your Nocking point and if they lower then you lower it. Simple right? I thought I'd make it more simple and just adjust the rest. I got it back wards though and lowered the rest which has the same effect as raising the nocking point since the rest is the pivot point. That led me to give up on Monday. Today, with some inspiration from a post on the Archery Talk discussion board I came up with the easy way to make sure my arrow is resting at the right height against the plunger.
A simple way to setup the adjustable rest height on your Olympic recurve. Take some paint and put it on the tip of the plunger. Nock an arrow and draw it back and forth a few times over the painted plunger tip. Check to see where the paint is worn away and if it's in the centre of the plunger your rest is in the right place. I did this using the brass tipped plunger pin that came with my Shibuya DX. It has a nice mark in the centre so its easy to see if you are in the right place.
After I did this today my arrows were flying nice again. I think I must have bumped it or something and bent the rest wire when I was trimming it to size the other day.

I tried something else that I've been wondering about. I played about with rotating the aperture on my sight to get an elliptical aperture rather than a round one. This way I get the precise aiming of a small aperture but the brightness of big open loop. I think another advantage is the oblong aperture makes it easy to see if you are canting the bow. Seems to work all right at 18m.
Wish I had done all this last week before the competition.

So...that was frustrating. 246 246 for a grand total of 492. Yeah thats only about 40 points less than I planned.

10 10 9 10 8 7 54

9 8 6 9 8 5 45

10 9 8 9 8 5 49
8 8 8 9 9 7 49

8 8 7 9 8 8 48