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AfterShock
Reality Strikes Series: By AfterShock Archery
This series of articles has been written by AfterShock Archery’s R&D Engineering quality team to reduce the BS factor when it comes to Bowhunting and broadheads in particular. We’ll separate the marketing buzzwords and deceptive advertising from reality and proven physics you can test yourself. Fly Like A Field Point?
If I were to go over all of the aerodynamic issues broadheads deal with, this segment would be 20 pages long. So, let us get a couple well-known aerodynamic laws out on the table: A sharp leading edge is NOT stable in flight. Look at any aircraft non-lifting control surface and you’ll see a nice radius leading edge with a taper to a sharper trailing edge in back. This alone should tell you that any fixed blade design is already in trouble. The obvious problem is we can’t hunt very well with dull blades with a nice 1/16” radius in front with sharp trailing edges. The fixed blade would fly faster and straighter this way, but severely affect its ability to make a humane harvest. Just like the airplane or bird, the fixed blade design has yet another issue; total surface area. Predatory birds in a dive try to reduce their surface area to gain the most speed. Certain advanced fighter aircraft reduce their surface area by swinging their wings in at high speed since they no longer need all that lift required for cruising. The plane and birds need wings for lift, we do NOT need lift. We need stable flight with minimum air resistance (like a missile or rocket). The less the surface area, the less drag you have and the faster you go. Or in our case, the smaller the surface area, the less drop in speed at target. Most important is the surface area of the blades themselves.
Forget about blades that have a large cut out (or window) areas in them (mostly there to save weight, not fly better). Even though the exposed blade area is less, there is even more turbulence caused by the “open window effect”. What’s a Bowhunter to do? You could go to a baby stubby broadhead with very little blade area and get some (I said some) accuracy and speed back, but the wimpy cutting diameter is scary and if you were that good of a shot and liked tracking game forever and a day, a field point could kill too. Let’s not just pick on fixed blades here. Almost all mechanicals claim they fly like a field point. I don’t know what kind of field point they use as a reference, but if they’re using a standard bullet nosed point, they are far from the truth. Just because a lot of the mechanicals have most of their blade area hidden, does not mean they fly like field point. Most Bowhunters are not good enough to shoot a one inch circle group at 40 yards like the X-Ring test machine by Pro-Release, so anything that even groups in the target must be just as good. If any mechanical has its blades facing forward, or trip levers near or at the tip, you have an instant recipe for unstable flight and uncontrolled turbulent air thrown all around the rest of the broadhead and arrow. Is it most likely better than the fixed blade for flight? Yes, but that by no means is field point accuracy or speed.
When the HyperShock was designed, it was crucial that
these issues were engineered out of the broadhead.
It’s the 21st century. Wouldn’t you agree that it’s about time a broadhead like the HyperShock was designed to actually fly like a field point and not just claim it? In the next segment, we’ll cover “Speed and Energy at Target” and why everyone only talks about speed out of the Bow! Aftershock Archery R & D For More Information Contact: AfterShock Archery L.L.C.
Email: info@aftershockarchery.com
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