Comments on Spin Wings Vanes by Rick McKinney

Edited version of discussion on Archery Talk Forum
For full version see Archery Talk

I have been thinking about some of the comments on this thread and how if you try something and it does not work, then we (me included) comment on how bad it is or it doesn’t work well for most, etc. Many people do not quite understand what another person is saying with absolute certainty unless you spend time to figure out exactly what is said, just as we have discussed here. I will use an example from my past if you all will indulge me for a moment of reminiscing.

Years ago, Darrell Pace was one of the first to shoot Spin Wing vanes and claimed they were the best. I figured I would try them and found them to be lacking without a doubt. My groups opened up and so I figured the only reason Darrell was using them was because he was being sponsored by Range-O-Matic, the makers of the Spin Wing vane. I voiced this opinion to those who asked why I did not use the Spin Wings. Anyway, I received a call from the son-in-law of the owner of Range-O-Matic. He was a USAT team member and asked me why I did not like the vanes. I told him that they did not group well and I got better results with my Myro-vanes made by Shig Honda. He asked me if I wouldn't mind trying them again at the next training camp and he would set them up. As my ego was fuming from this "insult", after all who does he think he is telling me I don’t know what I am doing? Well, needless to say, I told him that sure, if he was willing to spend the time and effort I would try them but I had my doubts and told him so. It was more to confirm to him that they did not work for me. Well, when we were at the next camp I gave him 9 arrows and said have fun and walked away. He had to clean off the fletchings and then he fletched me up with some Spin Wings. I looked at them once he was finished and told him I doubt that they would work and sure enough they grouped horribly! I looked at him and smiled. He said, "Don’t worry, I have a few things to try before we find what will work for you." So he took the arrows and stripped them down and re-fletched them again with a different placement and angle. An hour or so later, he gave me the arrows again. I shot them and my heart skipped a beat! They grouped REALLY good at 50 meters. Well, then I thought, I have three other distances to try before I got too excited. Needless to say, they grouped exceptionally well! As I swallowed my pride and looked a bit sheepish at him, I asked him what he did to make them work. He told me how to test the fletchings and figure out what will work and what will not work. I was so thankful that I let him talk me into trying them again. A few months later at the World Target Championships I set a new 70 meter world record on the third day and going on to win the Individual title. It is a wonderful feeling shooting the best score ever at a very stressful event. I feel that the Spin Wings gave me just a bit more edge on my shooting and never would have had that opportunity if it wasn’t for giving it another try. What was even more humbling was that all the Soviet men were in line to shake my hand right after I set the world record. The US archers came up to me after words and asked what that was all about. I had to grin.

I guess I should tell you a few things about Spin Wing vanes. There are several types including pliability, drag, height and length.

First are the colors. White is the softest which allows for more forgiveness if the vane hits the rest or plunger. Yellow is next, then red, blue and finally black is the stiffest. Obviously the black will hold it’s integrity downrange better than the rest. However, you have to determine if one performs better than the other by testing. Yes, it can become expensive. I have always stayed with the white because I have always had to deal with clearance issues.

Next is the length of the vane. It depends on the speed of the arrow to determine which vane length you should use. The faster the shaft the smaller the vane needed. If you get too much drag on the shaft (longer fletch) you may end up with a parachuting effect downrange causing your groups to open up. That’s why you see more archers using the 2"+ vanes with their x10’s. Most use the 1¾" vanes with their ACE’s and I have recommended using the 1 9/16" vane for McKinney II.

Now you also have to keep in mind of the clearance issue. This can be due to the height of the vane (the 1 9/16" and 2" vane are lower profiles, while the 1 3/4" and 2 3/16" vanes are higher profiles). If you are touching anything you may need to go to a smaller height vane if you cannot get better clearance. Using lipstick on the edge of your vane will show you if you have clearance issues. The lipstick will leave a mark where it hits. You can adjust your nock as well to get better clearance which I talk about a little later.

Now location of the vane becomes a bit critical. The length down from the nock is important. You do not want the vanes near your fingers. I know this sounds a bit weird but this part does affect the performance of the vane if your fingers touch the vane while releasing. Don’t put the vane down the shaft too far either (further from the nock). The farther down the shaft the more unstable the flight becomes. So get it back near the nock as close as you can without your fingers touching the vanes upon release.

Next is vane angle. You need to put the vanes on close to 0 degrees. The more angle you put on this vane, the more drag created and the less you will group (again, parachuting effect). Once you figure that out, then you need to decide best nock location compared to the vane. If you turn your nock a little it may make all the difference in the world for better grouping. This can be found easily by shooting and plotting your arrows. Shoot a few ends and move the nock a bit, shoot and plot. Once you find which gives you the best grouping then write everything down. The more information you have the easier it is to do this again and again. For instance, I had one fletch going exactly 12 o’clock high when the nock was on the string which gave me the clearance I needed.

Now, once you have done all of this you will need to verify the vane performs well in all conditions. Testing the vane in different winds and wind angles helps to learn how the vane performs and of course testing in the rain will help you understand which vane works best. You are looking for the over all performance of a vane, not one that does well in one particular condition.

Don’t forget there are two vane drags available. The light drag and standard. Usually, those with heavy poundage need to use the light drag vane. Those with lighter poundage should try the standard vane.

The Elite vane needs to be compared with the regular vane to find if it works better. I did not find the Elite to work for me. However, I have seen Vic Wunderle use them and was successful with them. So again you must try them to find out if they work.

All of this takes money to find out which vane works. What I suggest is to get a group of archers together. Each of you can buy one or two different packets of vanes and share. This will keep your costs down and allows more testing.

Here is another little story to show you how important it is to find out how the vane works. I was doing some testing for Richard Carella who was the inventor of the vane. He recommended I try the 2" vane. It was a little lower profile than the 1 ¾" and it just might give me an edge. So I put them on and they worked extremely well. My scores jumped up about 3-5 points at 50 and 70 meters (this was where I ran most of my tests). I was getting ready to go to a major event and decided to re-fletch my vanes so I stripped the 2"ers off grabbed some tape out of the 1 ¾" vane packet thinking it did not matter. Well obviously it did matter. The tape in the 2" packet was a lot slimmer than the ones in the 1 ¾". Thus I changed the drag of the vane and the performance was lousy to say the least. This just shows you that even a top archer will do silly things not thinking them through until it is too late. A good lesson learned though and it made me be more methodical. Oh and use the force!

Discussion

Rick - Can you provide a little more color as it regards this sentence?

So he took the arrows and stripped them down and re-fletched them again with a different placement and angle. An hour or so later, he gave me the arrows again. I shot them and my heart skipped a beat! They grouped REALLY good at 50 meters.

In your last post I got the impression that 0 degrees was what you were trying to achieve. I guess I'm curious about the placement and angle that he was trying to get.

He had the vanes a little too close to my fingers. They were fine at full draw but I knew that when I let go, my fingers would touch the vanes. Also, the vanes were about 2-3 degrees on the shaft. He made them 0 degrees. Then he tweaked the nock alignment until they started grouping. I think that these three things helped me shoot some great scores. Actually two of these items were fairly simple, distance of the vane from the fingers and angle. However, tweaking the nock around until I got absolute clearance was paramount. As I said, I had one fletch that lined up right with the string, thus the "cock" fletch was really lower than the normal positioning. Now, this does not mean it will work for everyone, but it really worked for me. My upper "hen" fletch would sometimes hit my plunger causing erratic flight and poor grouping. Just turning the nock a little eliminated that problem.

Spin wings are interesting and not as straight forward to set up as a straight fletch. They take up a wider path than a straight vane that must be accommodated (nock alignment) to get the best clearance. Some strike the lower vane and most strike the upper or hen fletch. I have seen an upper vane strike a clicker and a sight bar! The first time I tried them I shot poorly with them as well and went back to straight hard vanes. I now use them on my indoor arrows instead of feathers. (You know, you grow)

If the vane is being hit by the clicker it could be due to the clicker being too soft (most of us keep it soft so if you shoot though it, the arrow doesn’t go too far off course). If the clicker is too soft, it really will fly back out when you release the string and come out and hit the fletching. I have seen this in high speed films. You want it soft but not too soft. I have found that if I draw the arrow back with all three of my fingers ¼" below the arrow (no finger pressure against the nock) and watch the clicker click to see if it moves the plunger (the clicker will be too stiff then) or the clicker bounces upon the click (clicker is too soft) and adjust accordingly. If it is hitting the sight bar, then you can either move the sight bar in closer for now, especially if you cannot get weaker arrows.

- on vane fragility

Using rubber vanes is easy maintenance, but if you watch the top archers (medal winners) there is a 99% chance they are using the Spin Wing type vane. Once you figure it out you will see what I mean by getting better groups compared to rubber vanes.

- on vanes/tape detaching from shaft

First you might want to use like a woman’s curling iron and lightly touch the edge of the vane when it is on the shaft so that the vane will curl around the shaft. Ludmila Ahrzanikova (sp?) of the former Soviet Union and now a Dutch citizen taught me that little trick. The art of using the tape is a challenge. First you do not stretch it too much when you apply it and like John said you could use a little touch of glue to hold it. Normally the only reason that it does not stick is due to the surface area is not clean enough. Just the oily surface of your fingers could contaminate the surface area to keep it from sticking properly.

- on arrows sticking together in the quiver

Actually to keep the vanes from sticking to each other, once you fletch them just lightly powder them. The powder will eliminate all the unnecessary sticky areas and eliminate them from attaching themselves together so much. A real nuisance for sure.

According to Spin-wing instructions the drag colors variations from the least to the most are: 1.black and white 2.yellow 3.blue and 4.red. This means that the drag is not related to the "softness" of the vane?

How can I know if my vanes are standard or light drag? because in the paper which comes with the vanes doesn't says anything about that. Sometimes he sheet instructions is yellow and sometimes purple. I don't know if the drag properties is determined by the colour of the sheet instructions.

And the last question is that the instruction sheet says "available sizes: 1-9/16", 1-3/4", 1-3/4"VLD, 2", 2-3/16" and 2-13/16". What does "VLD" mean?

VLD- very light drag.

It would appear that the drag relationship to color is slightly different than the stiffness relationship. Not exactly sure why that is. However, if the instructions say it believe it. Black was a weird one for me. It seemed to be more fragile than the rest and I had all kinds of difficulties with it (just didn’t group!). Now, having said that, don’t forget that you are mainly looking for grouping and should keep ALL options open to find what gives you the best group, not what someone says or the instruction sheet tells you. I never really cared what an expert said only to gather information. All of my belief is in the arrows going into the center. If they did not go into the center it was not a good setup.

- using spin wings for indoor shooting

You are right on increasing the spin and drag by making the angle greater and this is great for indoor shooting. Several years ago, I used the 2312 (I think) using the 5" spin wings to win Vegas. They shot great. The difference between my shooting and yours is the compound/release vs recurve/fingers. The speed I had was probably 30-50% slower than your setup thus the 5" spin wings. Yes, when you go outdoors, you will have to make a lot of adjustments but you are on track from what I am reading here. If you have a drop away rest, the spin wings will be fantastic (no clearance issues). Just recognize the spin and drag will need to be minimal for your speed capabilities (probably the 1 9/16", 0 degrees).

Right now I am playing with my "skinny McKinney's" using a 1 3/4" Spin Wing. I have them at 5 degrees plus which is relatively sharp but I figured that it just might work since I am only shooting 18 meters. This would never work long distance, but it does work at close distance. For my Hippos I have used 4" feathers with a sharp helical. The drag keeps them stable.

- on vane length to use

As for determining what drag or what length of vane to use, as I mentioned above the heavier arrows (therefore a bit slower) will need a longer vane. When I used the old A/C 1508 arrow which weighed about the same as the 2114, I used the 2 13/16" vane. Did it work? You bet! I tied my 345 at 50 meters with them and averaged near 1325 that year with them. So they did work well. Since the arrow was just about traveling near 205 to 210 (similar to the current x10) that length of vane was a good stable one. When the ace was brought out in 1988 Richard Carella was asked by Jim Easton to help him develop a vane that would work better for the faster arrow, hence the VLD 1 ¾" and 1 9/16" vane. Just think of a jet. The bigger the plane, the slower and the larger the wing span. The faster the jet, the smaller the wing span needed. Now...unfortunately I have not taken the time to determine at what speed do you need to switch.

- on vane color/stiffness and drag

Drag is based on the flexibility of the vane. Thus, if it is softer or stiffer, it definitely will have a drag difference. Maybe the angles are identical but you can be sure this changes aerodynamically in flight. For those who feel that there is no drag difference that is fine. However, when you change the color pigmentation of this material it does change the flexural dynamics. Especially down range. If you disagree, please feel free to do so as I disagree with you. My personal experience and Richard Carella’s opinion was that there was a difference due to color. If the vane is a bit softer then it just might open up a little more than the slightly stiffer color, thus causing a difference in drag.

Yes, some very interesting comments made here about various items. First is the black material. I had always presumed it was stiffer than the rest and I do recall Dick telling me that it was stiffer, but it may have been changed to a softer material. I do believe that this material is a bit more fragile than the others. It always broke down faster than most of the other colors. However, Vic Wunderle used them for years and had a lot success with them.

As for the metallic green ones. I did play with them but do not recall the flex level of them. They were a bit on the fragile side too if I remember correctly. I mainly used the white because they were so consistent over the course of using them. Even when they were scraggly looking, they performed exceptionally well. Next, I used the yellow because they were fairly decent as well. I played with the blue, red and black and did not like them due to either their unforgiving performance or their fragile side.

- Spin Wings v offset flat vanes

As far as putting straight vanes at a sharp angle to get them to act similar to the Spin Wing. I am sure it is fine. However, if it was as good as the Spin Wing, then why doesn’t the top archer do it? It doesn’t take a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist to figure out if one performs better than the other and I am sure they have tried it! The simple techniques as I have discussed should give a big percentage of archers a better grouping pattern than they have with straight type vanes.

One thing I always worried about with spin wings was the affect of "bent" or "creased" vanes on arrow flight. What I mean by that is you can have 6 perfectly fletched arrows with spinnies, and after three ends 3 of those have at least one vane with a bend or crease from arrow impacts. A lot of the time, this goes unnoticed in an archer's quiver. Likewise, you can easily curl a fletched arrow more or less than normal...

So to me, all that seems to lead to inconsistent drag and performance once the arrows get banged around in normal use...

With vanes such as the Flex-fletch or the AAE plastifletch Max that I now use, once they are fletched, they pretty well maintain the same angle and shape for the duration...

I often worried about that fragile nature of the spin wings - not because of re-fletching often, which is simple enough, but because of the potential affect on drag it may have.

A great question.. I know that many people worry about the performance of the vane when it gets creased, but my experience has shown no difference in performance. I shot one national championships that even had two and a half vanes on my arrows and they still were going in the middle. One archer saw my arrows and said, "Are you using your practice arrows here?" (I was on the practice field at the time warming up before the round began). I mean these spin wings were so mangled that if I didn’t have the confidence in them I would never have thought to use them. However, they were working so good and I really didn’t want to take the time to refletch them. I told the guy they were the arrows I would use at the competition. He did not believe me. I told him to come to target one and see for himself. He did and just walked away shaking his head. I won by the way.

There are some things that I do to make sure the vanes are working as best as they can. First, when I pull my arrows from the target, I always inspect the nock ears, spin the shaft and then run my thumb down the taped edge on all three vanes. This insures that there is no loose part that might fly up when I shoot it and then it will fly like crap and end up in the grass…. I only did that once! Next I take the vanes and wrap them around the shaft opposite as the lay. This gets them close to being where they originally should be. These little steps insure that the vanes, nock and shaft is in working order. These simple little items takes so little time and you can train yourself to do it every time you pull your arrows that it becomes a good habit and eliminates that one freaky shot that costs you a tournament.

I remember when I first used mylar vanes (MyroVanes by Shig Honda). Dick Tone told Jay Barrs that he should not use the vanes because they were inconsistent. He showed Jay that the vanes when flexed made a different sound, thus each was different in flex and consistency. Jay’s simple little question was quite cute. He asked Dick, "Well if they are so inconsistent then why does Rick shoot so well with them?" Dick told him, "I haven’t figured that out yet!" Mind you, I had just shot a 345 at 50 meters setting a new world record at the time! The reason I bring this up is that no matter what it looks like on paper, no matter what the reasoning you use to question the consistency or quality of the potential of the product, you will only know if it works by testing it! Put it through all kinds of tests so that you know how it works. If it goes in the center, it works! No matter if it is logical or not!

- Why use high maintenance Spin Wings rather than rubber vanes

I can fully appreciate your comments about using a rubber fletch versus a Spin Wing vane. I would guess that most people will not notice a big difference or any at all if they are not in the "elite" level of competition. Most of the comments I made here was just a statement of fact. The Spin Wing vane has won so many medals since the late 1980’s that it is just a fact that they are the preferred choice of the champions (world and Olympic).

The most fragile and sensitive fletch and the elite archers are willing to take the time to keep that high maintenance on them so they can get a point or two extra. I agree with you that the rubber fletch will do the job for 90+% of the archers out there. I was just stating the facts of what you see in the elite world. If the rubber fletch was just as good, I would say that most “elite” archers would go with the rubber fletch because of what you stated, easy to fletch and easy to maintain.

I won my first world title with the PSE 260 rubber fletch (2115 x7), my second title with AAE rigid plastifletch (A/C 1508) and my third title with the Spin Wing (A/C 1508). You can see that I used three entirely different vanes and did well with them, but the Spin Wing came into play in the mid-1980’s. Check the records and you will see that they literally dominate for over 20 years. Again, it baffles me that one product can be so dominant with no financial reward other than winning.

New 18 September 2009