Rain Vanes off the Shelf

[Eric in FLA]

I have seen a few questions here about rain vanes off the shelf yet have not seen any first hand feedback to the questions.

If there is one thing we know about here in Florida, it is rain. We also do well in the areas of Hurricanes, tourists and tan lines, but let's save those topics for the long, cold February days after deer season and before Spring Turkey season.

Like many of you, I had read about these and was curious how they would perform. I purchased a few dozen from 3Rivers and fletched a few arrows. My standard set-up is a 29.25" 2117 shot from my brand new Schafer recurve, 70#@28, fletched with three 5" RW feathers and a 125 Zwickey up front. This set up performs well and is accurate for me. For the vanes, I chose three, 4" vanes with as much helicity as the strait clamp on the bitzenburger would permit.

I shot several groups of three shots with the standard set up and the rain vanes. Two arrows fletched with feathers to one fletched with the rain vanes. The feathered shafts were shot cock feather out and the vanes cock feather in. The results were very positive. There was not a perceptible difference in arrow speed or trajectory. Point of impact was well within my usual grouping, so nothing I could attribute to the vanes.

The result is that there will always be a few of these with me from now on.