Earlier in the year (I believe it coincided with the AAE Arizona Cup) Arizona Archery Enterprises introduced a new plastic vane specifically designed for recurve shooters, the WAV vane. It also happened to coincide with when I was switching arrow spines so I decided to give them a try (limit variables? hogwash haha).
So before we get into the nitty gritty lets do some background. For the most part the gold standard for recurve fletching is the range-o-matic spin wing. There are other great vanes like the Eli, Kurly, and Gas Pro that have, in recent years, made huge gains against the spin wing but for the sake of illustration, the spin wing usually comes out on top. The primary disadvantage to the spin wing is durability. Most archers, particularly of the compound persuasion are used to just gluing a plastic vane to the back of their arrow and forgetting about it until it falls off, potentially, years later (for compound, unless it gets destroyed I re-fletch once every six months). Spin wings on the other hand are mylar vanes that are not glued on but rather taped on. If you are a top level competitor who is very nice to your arrows then the spin wing is perfect, but if you are like me and a lot of other shooters out there then: A) your arrows get smacked together a lot during practice and B) you don't want to be carting your arrow set around like they're nuclear launch codes. Which leads to a constant need for re-fletching. The purpose of the WAV vane is to bridge this gap in durability and provide a system that is equally accurate but can stand up to the run of the mill mistreatment that comes with not having a national title to your name.
Starting first with the good news, the WAV vane does seem to deliever on AAE's promises of accuracy and minimal weight but with durability (but with a caveat... put a pin in it we'll come back to that part). It is a great little vane that groups well when oriented properly and is as simple to install as a basic Bohning Blazer vane. I had absolutely no problems with accuracy and other archers conducting their own comparison tests (mostly more rigorous than mine, such as John Magera's head to head comparison of WAV's, Eli's and Gas Pros) came to the same conclusion: that under optimum conditions WAV vanes will perform as well as or better than mylar type vanes.
But unfortunately that is not the end of the story. After only a few days/weeks the collective archery community began to circulate the tongue in cheek joke that the WAV vane got its name due to their propensity to turn "wavy". Most likely due to their extremely light weight and thin profile the WAV vane will indeed begin to wrinkle under normal shooting conditions (normal being the bumps and bangs from shooting groups etc). And as you would expect the inconsistent variable of a wrinkle or wave will affect accuracy at longer ranges. It is however, MOSTLY, imperceptible indoors when shooting at an intermediate level.
So granted AAE did maintain their promise of durability, a spin wing would have done more than wrinkle in most of these cases, but I'm not sure that's what the archery world had intended.
Ultimately, I do like these vanes under perfect, fresh out of the box, conditions; but the wrinkling does bother me a bit. Not enough that I've ripped them off my arrows but it does have me questioning if I'll continue to use them. (In fairness, there are some archers who have had good luck reversing the wrinkle with heat). Unfortunately, it's time for me to place another fletching order so I'll have to decide pretty quickly if I'll be continuing to ride the WAV or try something new... again...
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