Thursday, September 15, 2005

Medium Stems

I was only able to get a brief 30 minutes of practice last night, and I have taken the guy from Chopwell’s advice and switched to using Medium stems as opposed to my usual Short ones. I had 8 spare Medium stems in my kit box and I’ve ordered 10 more sets with an order I placed on behalf of Jan and Harry. They’ve ordered some interesting flights, and I’ll post a picture of them when they arrive.

The initial results are mixed ; as expected the flights now catch the side of my face a bit more than usual, and they actually seem to require a bit more force in the throw when aiming for high targets. However, they do seem to be just a bit more stable and consistent, giving the impression of being better balanced. The accuracy on all targets below bullseye level seemed to improve (T19, D16, D6 etc), but as mentioned I’ll need to adjust slightly for the higher targets such as D20, D5, D1 etc.

I’ll post a picture to illustrate the difference between the two stems, and in the meantime I’ll continue using them and see if they improve my stats. I’ll need to remember that mid way through September the monthly stats were already very poor – I won’t be able to blame the stems for this month’s terrible figures. I seem to have reverted to April’s form, but I’ll do my best to improve this in the final part of the month.

One milestone is looming : I’ll shortly be playing my 1,000th game of DartPro 501. That’s probably in the region of 100 solid hours on this aspect alone since I started using DartPro in late Feb 2005.

2 comments:

Zeeple said...

I have found medium stems to be too long for barrels such as yours. Long barrels need short nylon stems. Not only do you hit your face with the flight sometimes if the stem is too long, but you also throw off the balance of the dart.

Tommo said...

Thanks Zeeple. I agree, but I have so many problems with my throw at the moment I'm keen to at least try them for a month. I'll post a comparative picture, so see what you think. It's quite a subtle change, and I certainly wouldn't try Long.