Competition

A Flight Archery Competition consists of four rounds of 6 arrows and an archer can shoot in up to four classes.  Although this dosn't sound much, by the time everyone has walked up to find their arrows and marked the furthest arrow, the competition can result in a very long day.  For the longbow archer typical distances will be around 300 yards however for a compound flight bow this might well be just short of 1000 yards. Finding the arrows can be a problem since they don't always fly straight and are not very big, sometimes only 14 inches long which when you have a large airfield to look for it can take some time.

Until recently the discipline was dominated by the Americans however in recent years, thanks to a handful of dedicated British archers, Great Britain have wrestled a substantial number of World Records from them despite the American advantage of holding their competitions on the Salt Flats in the Mid-West where the air is thin, dry and very calm.

Classes & Categories

In Great Britain there is one World Record Status competition and one British Record status competition, both held at RAF Church Fenton in Yorkshire.  In addition there are currently two non-record status competitions, the West Midlands Flight Competition near Lilleshall and the Scottish Flight Competition at Castle Fraser near Aberdeen.  The main problem is in finding sites where there is sufficient room, there are remarkably few places where one can guarantee over 1000 yards free of other people.

In British competitions there are 6 types of bow, longbow, target recurve, target compound, crossbow and in addition specialised flight recurve and flight compound bows. In other countries, other bow types may feature such as the American longbow and flatbow.  Target recurve and target compound must be standard target bows shooting standard target arrows however flight recurve and flight compound bows are usually very small with very thin strings shooting very small arrows.  Since these bows are at the limit of the strength of the materials used, it it not unusual to see archers wearing a hard hat, safety goggles and very thick leather gauntlets.  The noise made by a bow or string breaking can be quite spectacular.

Bows are also divided into weight categories depending on the type and weighing the bows forms an important preliminary to the competition and can also take place between each round.  Unfortunately GNAS (and the Americans) use imperial measures whilst FITA uses metric and there is do direct one to one correspondence between them.  The weight categories also differ between ladies and gentlemen.

Aspirations

Arrows are shot at about 45 degrees to the horizontal and each competitor may have an assistant to help with getting this angle right.  Flight archery competitions are also unique in that archers do not have to wear the standard green and white, in fact they are encouraged to wear bright coloured clothing.  Archers shoot along a line and distances are measured perpendicular to this line so there is an incentive to be on this line.  The rules state that the actual line can be chosen to gain any advantage from the prevailing wind however in Britain we cannot gain this advantage since this direction is also determined by the available space.

As can be expected wind conditions and weather pay a critical part in any flight competition, rain is especially damaging to distance as is a cross wind.  In the latter case the arrow shaft is not in line with its flight and this increases the drag substantially.  The ideal conditions are flat calm or with a slight following wind where it is the hope of the archer that they can get their arrow to float through the air and substantially increase the distance.

The aim of the archer is to make a perfect release of the arrow and that the arrow is perfectly tuned to the bow.  Every effort is made to reduce drag and the arrow shaft and pile are highly polished whilst the fletch is reduced as much as possible. Flight arrows are also peculiar in that they usually have very light points in order to minimise the overall weight of the arrow.  Flight archers put a lot of effort into getting their arrows just as they think are correct, barreling the shaft to get an aerofoil shape is just one of the many tricks.

This page contributed by Heather Urquhart (Loreburn Archers)