Tips for Using Wind-Flags
Butch Lambert, who distributes the Elliott “Aussie” BRT wind flags, gave us some expert advice on wind flags. Butch writes: “Chatting with the top shooters in our sport about flags gave me some surprising insights. You do not want your flags balanced. The weight should be biased to the vane side. That will help take the twitch out of your flags. It will take the windshield wiper effect out. The Aussie propellers are used for velocity reading only at very low wind velocity. They are mainly to let you see a pickup or a let up. The sailcloth tails are attached with a clip that does not allow the tail to twist and it also holds the shape of the flag in a V so that it doesn’t flop in the wind. Daisy wheels slow response of the vane, puts a shake in your wind flag, and hides the vane on any tailwind.” If you have more questions about wind flags, contact Butch at ShadeTree Engineering.
What Butch is suggesting here does not apply to Graham wind flags. Graham flags long ago had the “windshield wiper effect” designed out. Keep your Graham flags well balanced and they will work the way they are supposed to. Rick Graham
While the Aussie flags are impressive … so are Rick Graham’s flags, and they’re three times less costly.
If you haven’t seen or used one of Rick’s innovative Uppy/Downy vertical indicating wind flags you owe it to yourself to check it out at brflags.com.
Rick Graham is right. If a wind flag requires off-balancing to reduce the windshield wiper effect, something is wrong with the design. It seems like “Extreme Sensitivity” is in direct contraction when the recommendation is to adjust balance toward the tail. That action only adds resistance and friction attempting to slow down the response. There are better ways to neutralize the overaction of a wind flag. Too bad Rick Graham is no longer making wind flags, I hope the ideas he created will continue with the new owner. Rick sent me a picture of his Uppy-Downey several years ago and some of his ideas were the same as I had been making. We were both surprised that only a few had realized how easy they were to make and work well.
Had a bad experience today, I noticed a pricing error on the Graham Wind Flag site. I wrote identifying the problem, nothing more. Here is the response I got back. “I would take a good hard look at your own web page before meddling in other folks business.” Hopefully this is an isolated case or perhaps just a bad day. But this is no way to respond to someone trying to help.