Archery this evening was good until it got rained off. My bow is currently in my sister’s bedroom so that it gets properly dry before I pack it all away in its box again. Hopefully the weather will be better on Tuesday, as this evening I was shooting very well indeed (by my standards anyway), putting in several 2 and 3-gold ends, with only the occasional arrow going wild (one white, one black, a few blues but mostly reds and golds). Still only shooting 40 yards though, I reckon I’d be fine at 50 but the 50 yard target was quite crowded this evening. Hopefully there’ll be space there on Tuesday, if not maybe I can persuade them to put up two — if I get there early enough. I really want to get back up to shooting at 60 regularly as soon as I can, but I don’t want to leap 20 yards up in distance all at once.

Of course, the big news in archery recently is the bronze medal Alison Williamson won in the Olympics, and the bronze medal Larry Godfrey almost won. It’s great, and will probably result in another upsurge of interest in the sport. More beginners courses on the way methinks. But that’s okay, because I’m not qualified to teach them. Not that I wouldn’t teach them, but I doubt anybody would actually want me to.

I need to get some more gadgets for my bow. People keep saying to try things and I’m very tempted. Definitely going to start using a clicker, my draw length is a bit erratic, and it helps hold the arrow on the rest in windy conditions like we’ve been having recently and will increasingly have as the outdoor season draws to a close. A doinker seems useful too – worth a try, and I guess I could eventually find someone to sell it to if I don’t get on with it.

For those who are wondering, a doinker is a flexible rubber bit which goes between the end of a stabiliser rod and the weights generally attached to the rod, giving a point where the weights can flex without the rod having to move. It substantially changes the vibration absorbtion characteristics of the rod, and I could do with some more dampening really. Added more weight to my longrod, which seems to have helped, but not really in the way I was hoping it would.

The other thing to try is a V-bar extender. This basically moves the whole stabiliser arrangement a few inches away from the front of the bow, changing the balance point. That’s something else that seems like it might be useful, so I might just get all three and see how it goes.

Archery’s got as much potential for gadgets as computing. I love it!