TAC Competition?

[Konrad]

Well folks, we all knew it would happen sooner rather than later, there appear to be two new "ultra-performance" crossbows coming to market. The Barnett Ghost and the BowTech Stryker and both are claiming launch speeds of 400 fps with respectably weighted arrows. Both units are very competitively priced to boot.

I was wondering if the resident TAC tech staff had put either through its paces.

I have seen advertising pictures of the Ghost wearing Easton Full Metal Jackets so they must be up to the task (400fps anyway) with Barnett's cams.

Sometimes I think I'll never grow up.
It's like Christmas every few months.
There has never been a better time to be alive in the archery industry!

 

[jon.henry755]

Hi Conrad,
It's been a while since either of us have done any forum writing, but your information definitely caught my attention. I for one have not seen or tried these new crossbows, but at that velocity it shouldn't be long before they catch somebodies attention.

The issue of them using FMJ's could be because they are able to use a shorter length arrow, therefore they might not require quite as stiff a spine as the TAC15's. Although PSE claims the TAC15 arrow spine is a .140, my carbon spine testing of their shafts says that a .150 arrow will do just fine. Unfortunately I haven't found the FMJ's in a .150 spine yet.

So far I've found the majority of the PSE TAC Arrows to run somewhere between .160 and .180 and that range comes from about 5 dozen shafts that I've now tested.

One of the biggest variance factors that I've come across are the weight deviations in both their shafts and their field points. Their 85 grain field points are rarely 85 grains. Many are as much as 3 or 4 grains off from the stated weight. Since I balance my shafts to within 1/10th of a grain from the heaviest to lightest shaft in a group, it takes quite a bit of work to get these shafts fully tuned.

It'll be interesting to hear how the new entries are performing.

Jon