The aerodynamics of a tennis ball are consistent. If not, the ITF would have been forced to find a different implement for its competitors to hit a long, long time ago.

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Billy, I'm not being sarcastic at all, I love this stuff. I appreciate someone going through the trouble, and then sharing. I'm bummed that it is this weekend, it will be hard to make it, but I'll get in contact with you and try my best to be there.

Tom,

Tennis balls alone would be very consistent. My concern is that Billy said that he was going to use WEIGHTED tennis balls. If you glue a bunch of weight to the tennis ball insert a line tie, and are not very careful the center of mass of the tennis ball may become very different and cause a wobbly flight path. With tennis balls alone, I would line up the casters and have them fire away 4 rods at a time. With a weighted ball, I would take more care and go only one at a time with the same ball.

Joe

Right, I already mentioned using the same ball for each cast. See my first post.

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My question is what brand of tennis ball are you going to use and will that make a difference

We did this already, a small slit in teh tennis ball, tie line on the sinker, squeeze the sinker inside the ball. I was amazed the ball didn't fly off after any casts the last time. We cannot line the casters up and have them throw at the same itme, one cast, somoene walks over picks hte ball up, caster cranks line until it's tight, both walk over to teh side and the distance will be measured - this will take care of any casts that go left and right so we won' thave to have the field marked off in an ac like the hammer throw or shot put or discus in the Olympics.

john timberlake Wrote:
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> My question is what brand of tennis ball are you
> going to use and will that make a difference


I can tell you this, The balls will be either green or white and weigh between 56 and 59.4 grams. Penn might be the brand of ball though Wilson can make a pretty mean ball as well!

Billy sounds like a good plan. Thanks for the clarification.

Joe

Joe, we ran into a lot of problems last time, which I've taken steps to correct this time. We also had a lot of success, and we're building off that. IT's as accurate as it is going to get> much more than what 1 builder is capable of doing himself. I rather be able ot use this info than to assume the manufacturers are providing us with accurate info, or to listen to people who say if it an't broke dont' fix it. numbers don't lie.

I would worry about the balls and CCSing if we were using a casting machine but no one person will cast the same so the variable in materials is meaningless. Also the variables in the blanks are going to be there no matter what and I think are so small that it has no bearing on the outcome!!

While you could use only one blank, make the casts, cut guides off, re-place all the guides, do the casting again, etc - by the time you move from one set up to the next and make all the casts the conditions will have changed. Wind, barometer, temperature, UV rays, and the earth's rotaional velocity may have decreased by .00015 mph.

I hope peopel take the opportunity to attend this event and see what happens. I will not be posting specific data form this event because it is not fair to those who make the effort to show up. I know that is not feasible for people to travel long distances, but there are a lot of people local who rather let us do all the work and glean the info. That one way street hit a dead end.

WOW! Too much Rocket Science! Go Cast them and let us know. When I test cast i use a Lacrosse ball weighs about 5 1/2 OZ

Billy,
It sounds great & I can't wait to see the results.

Guys I wasn’t trying to be a jerk and say what you were doing is stupid, I was just trying to offer a suggestion on how to make the test better and amplify the differences you are trying to test for, in this case the guide systems.

Have fun!

I think you should post the event on YouTube for independent review. Each can draw his or her own conclusions!

The post Billy mentioned earlier was intriguing because one of the options for a spinning set up involved placing the butt guide far away from the reel (some 35 inches). What's the consensus on that?

Thanks,
Rick

The degree of difference between various guide set-ups will interest both spin casters and rod builders. I realize it would be sacrilege, but suppose you took the VS200 off the rod and mounted a SLOSH 20 filled with the same kind of line on the spin rod and test cast it under the same conditions? I would be interested to see how much difference the extra five hundred dollars makes - even with the wrong guides with the wrong placement.

On a spinning reel, the spool diameter is really the only factor involved in casting. Nothing else about the reel plays any role in casting, so it'd be very unusual for the more expensive model to make any difference in that regard. Unlike casting reels, a $40 spinning reel and a $400 spinning reel both having the same spool diameter are likely to cast exactly the same. No moving parts on the cast.

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Unless you have severe wind gusts this will be pretty accurate. Even with gusts, the averaging will tend to make wind a moot point.

Cool stuff, Billy!

Chuck

_________________________________________
"Angling is extremely time consuming.
That's sort of the whole point." - Thomas McGuane

Chuck, we had a lot of crosswind last time, it mad eit VERY difficult because we didn't have the space to adjust the direction we casted. We have a couple of locations and the area is large enough that we should be able to get the wind at our back regardless of the direction. [northeastrodbuilders.com] As long as everyone is casting under teh same conditions, the results will not be skewed.

Phil - the extra $500 spent on a VS is definitely not because it casts so well, it's a horrible casting reel compared to other reels form Diawa or Shimano, let alone those reels the tournament casters use with teh long wide arbor spools. Putting a conventional reel on there will cast well (the set ups with the smaller guides), but the high frame guides are not an ideal set up for fishing. If oyu wanted to make a dual purpose rod, and many people have (I think Trey at Hatteras Outfitters used to sell a dual purpose rod built on an Outcast Chameleon blank), you can definitely set it up so that th erod will cast nice for both set ups.

I would think a very smooth slick casting weight would cut thought the wind better
No

Bill - willierods.com