Once you get used to the program you may find that your attitude towards testing is changing. At least it happened to me. Much of what you have this far done by 'feel' and without much thought, can now be done more precisely and better. For example, if you have tuned your setup by using the group sizes as the quideline, you probably have measured the groups by eye only, perhaps even with a measuring tape. Most likely, all data is gone once you have pulled the arrows from the butt.
Quite often, when you change something (button pressure, draw length etc.), you may shoot a little better groups than before. It's very easy to think that the change was the reason for the improved grouping. However, usually you should pay attention to your groups for a longer time, before drawing final conclusions. After you start to record your hits in numerical format you'll find out that it is pretty easy and gives you a significantly better touch of what happens when you tune your bow. Most importantly, you get exact figures and can cumulate your data to get more reliable results.
The most obvious uses of the program are arrow selection and tuning for groups, but there are many other things you can discover, some of which you may have not thought of before. I will list here some, and I would like very much if you would send more ideas.
The original purpose for the program. Much of this has been explained on the tutorial page, but let's try a little different point of view. This description follows the lines of a very good article in the Jan/Feb 2002 issue of the Archery Focus magazine, written by Vittorio Grangilli. You should also visit Joe Tapley's excellent pages, the Arrow Selection page covers the theoretical background of the selection process very well.
The true behaviour of the arrows shows up most clearly unfletched. Therefore you should patiently test your new arrows right after you have assembled them, but not fletched them yet. Be very careful in the assembly. Use only parts from the same production batch, if possible. Try to make the arrows to the same weight. The arrow points are perhaps the most critical parts in this respect. You can grind the heavier points to get them weigh the same as the lighter points. Be careful when glueing them into the shaft, excess glue may increase the weight considerably. Remember to clean the inside of the shaft first with a cotton tip swab, for example.
If you want to do absolutely everything possible to rule out all inconsistencies, you can float the shafts. This means putting water, some soap (to remove the surface tension) and arrows (plugged in both ends, e.g. with nocks) in a bath tub. Floating in the water, the arrows should turn their lightest side up. It's arguable, whether this method reveals anything useful about the arrow, but you can use this as a starting point, when you put the nocks in your arrows for the first time. Anyway, you should mark the nock index point in the shafts. Afterwards, when you need to change the nock, you may not know, which way to put the nock. This can change the behaviour of the arrow.
If the bow has not been tuned for the arrows, you can fletch a few shafts and go through the basic tuning process. After that, remove the vanes, number each shaft and start the test. About bareshaft arrows: actually, they should not be totally bare. The vanes, light as they are, have a mass. If you measure the center of gravity of the fletched and bare arrows, it is different. To compensate this difference, I use a strip of paper tape wound over the vane area of the bare shaft, about 14 cm of a 19mm wide tape. It's relatively easy get a good match by putting a lengthy strip and cutting it shorter, until the COG is the same. The tape causes some drag, but I think the effect is negligible compared to the weigth error of the untaped bareshaft. Of course, you can try the difference, if you don't believe me :)
The distance and number of shots depend on your abilities. Very good archers may shoot from 70 metres, and a few ends may be sufficient. About FITA 1100 level archers should stay at 30 metres or less and shoot end after end, maybe sharing the job on several days. The most important thing is to get reliable results, i.e. find out the flight properties of each individual arrow shaft.
There should be a couple arrows with relatively good grouping somewhere in the middle of the overall group. Mark these as your bareshaft arrows. You can fletch them, but if you ever need to do bareshaft testing, these are the arrows you should use as a reference.
If some arrows have a clear tendency to go the upper right, for example, you can try to turn the nock. Using 120 degree increments is generally recommended, because it does not require refletching and shows the results quicly and clearly. Sometimes this helps, sometimes not. This means more testing, but it can give you more arrows you can depend on.
To select these arrows, use the 'Select x best arrows' feature of ArrowMaster. Normalize the results by tests to get the overall group center into the middle of the target. Set the number of arrows to three, and examine the different arrow sets proposed by the program. Try to find a set having it's center close to the center of the target, and as small group size as possible. You can mark a 'B' on the shafts of these arrows, for example.
To select arrows for competition use, set the number of arrows to 3 or 6 (indoor and outdoor season), or 4 or 7 (for one spare arrow). Now you are searching for the smallest group size. Of course, if a small group happens to be near the center, all the better. You can examine the sets more closely. They may contain some stray hits, which are not far enough to be ruled out by the filter, but seem not to belong to the group. You can 'tighten' the filter limit to see how it changes the arrow selection. Be reasonable and honest to yourself, however.
Once you have selected the bareshaft and competition arrows, you should fletch all arrows and test them again. Fletching may change the behaviour of some arrows, and the final competition set may be a little different than the original test implied.
It's up to you, but I would suggest that having used this much effort, you should use your best arrows only in competitions. If you shoot 2000 arrows in a month, it's almost inevitable that sometimes an arrow hits another. All my arrows breaks have been results of an arrow hitting another arrow's shaft inside the butt, where there is no room for the shaft to bend away. I've broken nocks, naturally, about one or two in a week, but the shafts have never suffered from that. On the other hand, I know people who have destroyed several shafts that way. Maybe I've just been lucky. Anyway, risking the best arrows by using them in practise shooting is not very wise.
When you have to buy or build new arrows, use components of same type and weight. It helps, if you have written down the exact properties of the shaft, point etc. If you want to sure, you should unfletch all your arrows and repeat the arrow test from the beginning. Normally, testing the new arrows together with the original arrows, fletched, should suffice. You can use the older arrows as a reference when deciding, whether the new arrows are good enough for competition use.
Even if you try to spare your competition arrows, they do not last forever. You should test them periodically, twice a year for example. Comparing the results of the new and older tests, there should be no significant difference between the behaviour of the arrows. If there are, perhaps you should consider purchasing a new batch of arrows. To see the differences between the tests, start two instances of the program. Select different test(s) to compare in both windows, then select the same arrows in both windows. By examining the group centers and sizes, you should be able to see, whether something has changed or not.
The very basic tuning method. Well, not exactly basic, because the bow and arrows must have been first chosen and set up so that reasonably small groups can be achieved.
In principle, everything can be tuned by measuring the group sizes for each setting and selecting the ones giving the smallest groups. When all tunable items have been checked, the resulting setup is optimal, in theory. Often the tuning is iterative, because most things affect on others.
Most of us try to enhance our shooting by buying and installing new gadgets like stabilizers, doinkers, arrow rests etc. Some can even afford to purchase a new set of arrows every now and then :) The difference between the new and old equipment may often be difficult to observe objectively because of the so-called 'new toy effect'. When you start to shoot with a different point weight, for example, you are very probably more concentrated than usually for the first few ends. Looking at the those scores does not give you reliable information, however.If you want to see, whether X10 is better than ACE, for example, you have to tune your system for both, shoot a lot and analyze the results. My suggestion is to shoot several hundred arrows with both setups, preferably alternating them to 'shuffle' the results. Create two test sessions and add the hits to each test accordingly. You can continue this for days or even weeks, if you like. After examining the accumulated groups and the total standard deviations you should have a much better picture of the performance of the two setups than trusting your 'feel' only.
The main factor in getting good or not so good results is the archer, not the equipment. The differences in the shooting technique are not very easy to test, but something can be done. These tests may need even more shooting than equipment tests, because the consistency in the new methow may be hard to achieve and even harder to maintain. One practical solution might be shooting a reference test with your current style, with about 100 shots. Then go on and learn a lower or higher bow hand position, for example. This may take you month, maybe more. Shoot another test of 100 arrows and compare it with the previous test.
The nocking point has traditionally been determined by bareshaft test. The method is no way obsolete, but it's sensible to confirm the result with an independent test.
Simply shoot several ends with different nocking point settings, using half a millimeter increments, for example. To avoid systematic errors, you may need to 'randomize' the settings, shoot many ends with the same nocking point, continue the test another time etc. Remember to comment each end, so you know which nocking point was used in that end.
To analyze the results, organize the ends so that they are in nocking point order, from the lowest to the highest, for example. When you look at the bar graphs, you should be able to see a minimum in the standard deviation. You can also use the vertical projection and normalize the result by ends to see, if that gives a clearer view.
Most of the description for nocking point test applies for button test as well. This test is usually more effective at longer distances, say from 50 metres up. You should make the test for different distances to confirm the result.
Do you know how much the changes in the sight adjustment move the group center on the target? Do your know this value exactly for each distance? I'm afraid most of us have never even tried to measure this. During a competition, it is very frustrating to try to find the correct setting, if you don't know what you are doing.
With ArrowMaster, this check is easy. Just shoot a number of ends with different sight settings. For example, +-3 turns, with one turn intervals. It's best to use 'random' changes, say -2, +1, -1, +3 etc. to minimize systematic errors. The most difficult part may be to not let your subconscious interfere. When you aim to the center and see the arrow fly to either side, you very easily start to 'compensate' it. It's also good to use your best arrows to keep the groups as small as possible.
When you have, say, a dozen hits for each setting (for each distance, this takes a quite lot of shooting), enter the data into ArrowMaster. Horizontal and vertical tests can be made separately, for clarity. Enter the sight offset values into the comment columns and organize the rows into an ascending order. When you browse through the ends, note the positions of the group centers. Their horizontal or vertical distances should be more or less constant, depending on your form and consistency. If a dozen values per sight setting does not give reliable values, go and shoot more :) Eventually, you will find out, how much a single click affects on the hit.
If you have a easily adjustabe button, like Beiter, it's handy to know how much one click of the button moves the hits on the target. Especially if you use Joe Tapley's varible tuning method, you have to test this. The test method is pretty much like the 'Sight setting' test described above. Just shoot several tests with different spring tensions, say with half revolution increments, and examine the group center movements. If you are not an excellent archer, the distances between the groups are not constant, but taking an average over several groups gives usually the correct result. From the distances of the groups, you can deduce the group movement per one click.
When you shoot at different distances, you probably need to adjust your sight both vertically and laterally. The vertical adjustment is all right :), but it would be nice to get rid of the lateral shift. You can try the TATA method described by Ron A. Carmichael, but there are other ways, too.
First, read the comments of the walk back tuning by Joe Tapley. If I have understood his theory correctly, the following procedure should help to achieve a setup, where lateral sight adjustment is not necessary:
As ArrowMaster stores everything into XML files, these files can be used to transfer information between the archer and his/her coach, for example. Select the test(s) you want to send and use the Save selected tests menu option or toolbar button. Send the file to your coach by email. When the coach receives the file and loads it, he/she can see the results of your test sessions.
Use the comment field in the test dialog to pass info to the coach. There is no limit for the length of the comment, so you can as verbose as you want.
To help arrow comparisons, you can add a comment to each arrow. Select the Arrow tab, select one arrow, click Edit comment and type in the comment. For example, you can enter the measured weights of the shaft and the point. Also, if you suspect some damage in the shaft, this is the place to type it in. When you print the hit patterns, you can compare the measured characteristics and the patterns of different arrows: