Thomas,

It's already been done, many, many times. The responses given were not "WAGS" as you say. They come from knowledge and decades of experience.

The amount of "flex" from the guides mentioned, in a real world casting situation, will have no practical effect on casting distance.

............

Thomas Cayman Wrote:
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> And still not anything more than a guess to the
> question at hand, how does guide flexibility
> impact casting distance?
>

No guesses here. Guide flexibility does not affect casting distance.

I spend a lot more time reading this forum than posting on it. In my personal experience there are many very fine rod builders who post here and their comments are rarely WAGS or anything close to that. They know their stuff. Of course a person with enough time on their hands can take it upon themselves to fill pages with calculations theoretically proving that guide flex will reduce a two hundred foot cast by three inches. The fish will be impressed.

YES YES YES

AS Richard said............ " THE FISH WILL BE IMPRESSED "

Tim,
Have you wrapped and finished your guides on the rod yet?

If not, it might make sense to build up the rod temporarily with a few number of guides, test cast, and then load it up with the guides you have now. Verify any difference.
You may or may not see a difference.

If so, let us know your results.

Good luck
Roger

Tim,

A couple more things to think about to put the amount of energy loss in perspective. When the rod is fully loaded, the tip of the rod is going to be pointing toward the weight. Those first few guide frames in the tip section won't be flexed much at all. There will be a few guides in the mid section that will have forces that apply a torque to the frame, providing the best chance for the frames to flex. These are the guides that will be taking energy from the system at this point. I really can't imagine the guide frames taking much energy from the system, as you don't have to flex the frames very far before they deform. This puts a limit on the max load that they can take before they become useless for the task.

A good test, if you are really concerned would be to use your DF reduction guides, use DF guides that are the same height as your runners (tweak the frames if needed) for the choker and first running guide or two, and then go on to your SF runners. Then compare casting results to all DF runners and choke, all SF runners and choke, and a more traditional setup. I'm sure the day it would take to wrap and rewrap the rod a few times and compare results would be well worth the effort. It would certainly give you peace of mind.

If you try a variety of options, let us know how it works out. If you would see a significant qualitative result between using rigid DF frames as opposed to SF frames, then it would be worth the effort to perform a set of calculations. If the results are not significantly different, or you get better results from the SF guides, you can sleep more easily knowing that until lighter more rigid frame materials come along, that you don't need to worry about energy loss due to the flexing of guide feet.

Joe

It is very easy to get all too caught up in minutia which has no real bearing on what actually takes place in the real world of fishing. Nice to think about but there are other factors that can and do make a real difference. I would concentrate on those and not worry too much about losing energy through guide flex. I do not even think you could test for such a thing due to the fact that you will never make two indentical casts. Any effect from guide flex would be so terribly small that it would be almost impossible to measure.

As somebody above me said........... "Don't overthink things too much."

It seems very simple to me.

1) What is going to flex more, the guides or the blank? - the answer is the blank.

2) Adding anything to the blank, such as guides, adds weight and will make the blank flex more for a given casting stroke ... any extra flex in the blank is a loss of efficiency.

The answer is that you want to add as little weight to the blank as possible, especially near the tip end of the rod... this means using the lightest guides possible. Did I miss something? This is not rocket science.

Thanks to all that replied....

One rod is completed with the NGC system, TKWSG 30-20, TKTSG 10, and 6 TKTSG 8's and a tip top. I have three more to build, as I am making myself a set of these for carp fishing, so experimentation is a possibility. But of course, who wants to tear a rod down after building on it, and when these blanks are goin nearing $300 each, I don't want to mess around too much.

Just one of those things that occured to me, the loss of energy, when really torquing on the rod with heavy weights, some loss has to occur, but maybe its nothing too substancial. Some have said you'd have to be a robot to test this, but my thoughts were you would take 5-10 casts, whatever and average them out and see what you get. Again, here in WI, woke up to -12 F this morn, so am quite apprehensive to get out and lay into this rod. I am looking forward to that....

Tim,

You are right, a sample of test casts will yield results on real world performance. I would push the sample to 10-20, to prevent the outlying data points (you'll have that one miserable cast or two, and possibly a longer than normal cast) from influencing your results too much. Testing a few different setups will quickly show any qualitative differences between them. As Tom said, the improvement of NGC setups as opposed to Cone of flight setups is on the order of 3-5%. I would expect a smaller difference when comparing setups with only slightly different running guide setups.

Joe

I'm far from an expert but I'll throw my two cents in.

I believe Tom is dead on with respect to weight affecting casting performance. This occurs in two instances.

1. On the backcast, the heavier assembly (guides+thread+finish) will carry a greater momentum while the rod is moving backward. Consequently, it will take a greater force to overcome this momentum and allow the rod to begin the forward cast motion. The greater the amount of weight farthest from the effective fulcrum (pivot point or the hand if you will) the greater the moment acting upon the rod tip. In order to overcome this, a greater force would need to be applied to the rod tip or the speed of the backcast would have to slow down to avoid overloading the rod. A lob cat would have to be used and distance will be reduced.

2. On the forward cast, when the line is released and the forward motion stopped, the momentum of the rod tip will try to maintain forward motion. If the rod cannot recover fast enough, the line will not follow a straight path out of the rod tip, but will follow the oscilaltions of the rod tip as it attempts to rebound to the neutral position. Again, the greater the weight at the tip, the greater the momentum and the greater the frequency of the oscilaltions. You want the rod tip to stop as soon as possible after line release.

Of course these are only a few factors. You then have the frequency built into the blank, the stiffness, the strength and technique of the caster, etc., etc.

Don't forget that when we alter the guide placement of a rod, we also alter the casting characteristics of what the manufacturer designated fro the particular blank.

Not as simple as it seems.