W&W Inno CXT Riser
When I took up archery my first riser was the Sebastian Flute Forged Plus and I still think this is one of the best risers for a beginner as it has all the features of a more advanced riser but at a fraction of the price and most importantly shoots very well. Having reached a stage where I'm looking to progress further in archery I decided that it was time to upgrade my riser.
It's no secret that the two biggest names in recurve bows are Hoyt and Win & Win and when you are looking at spending £300 - £500 on a riser there is very little to separate them with the largest decision factor being personal preference in how they feel and shoot to the individual.
Having fairly recently bought a new pair of Win & Win Rapido limbs and having previously shot a Sebastian Flute riser, which is made in the Win & Win factory, it made sense for me to buy a Win & Win riser and initially I started looking at the Winex riser. The Winex is certainly a very fine riser but I figured that if I was going to spend a few hundred pounds on a riser I may as well do it once and buy the best I could afford and so looked at the Inno range. As I didn't want an aluminum riser that ruled out the Inno AXT and Inno AL1 and so I opted to buy the Inno CXT.
W&W Rapido Limbs
When I started archery a couple of years ago I obviously wasn't going to spend a lot of money on my first set of limbs. In the end I bought long SF Premium limbs with a draw weight of 34lb. The SF Premium limbs are made from Maple wood with glass laminates and for a first set of limbs they are actually pretty good with a smoother draw than other 'starter' limbs of a similar price.
The SF Premium limbs have served me very well and with them I easily achieved 2nd Class classification in my first year and 1st Class classification in my second year. In terms of the distance I could achieve, with a draw length of just short of a 30" (I am pulling nearly 40lb on the fingers as measured with a bow scale) this allowed me to easily shoot at 60 yards but there was a noticeable and rapid drop off towards 80 yards. Whilst I never tried to shoot at 100 yards with these limbs I am certain that I would not have been able to reach this distance as my sight block was virtually at the bottom at 80 yards anyway.
Slow Motion Video Has It's Uses
I've always been a fan of the iPhone but my iPhone 4 was running slower and slower and so needed to be replaced. Having had a couple of iPhones previously, owning an iPad and two Apple Mac's it made sense to stick with Apple and so I went with the iPhone 5S. The difference between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 5S is huge. So much faster, better screen, better camera, 4G capabilities etc etc. To be honest when I got the iPhone 5S I hadn't realised that it can now shoot video in slow motion as I've never really used the video side of any of my phones. A couple of weeks ago though I found a use for this feature in my archery.
Shibuya Ultima RC Carbon
When I took up archery a couple of years ago I just bought a basic sight to get me a going, a Cartel Q Sight which I bought from Quicks. As a complete beginner there was little point in me buying anything better as at that stage a pin stuck in the side of the riser would have been good enough for me. However, although a big improvement over a pin, the Cartel Q Sight was not without it's problems. A common complaint with pretty much all Cartel sights is that they constantly shake themselves loose with some people saying they have to re tighten them after every arrow. I was fortunate that my sight would remain tight most of the time and 'only' required tightening once or twice a session. Unfortunately this was probably due to it being very stiff and meant that it was a nightmare to adjust. So around 8 months ago I started looking for a new sight, but which one should I buy?