Flights & Shafts
Flights and Shafts
Dart Shafts
Shafts come in six lengths and coupled with various flight shapes allow you to fine-tune your dart set. Darts, when thrown, are affected by air resistance and the natural pull of gravity. In order to attain the trajectory and flight pattern best suited to your individual throwing style, one should experiment with the various shaft lengths and flight shapes to modify your dart. By doing this, you are modifying the dart to match your throwing style rather than changing your throwing style to accommodate the dart set. Typically, when your dart has excessive wobble, this can be corrected by shortening the shaft length.
Although there are many different shaft lengths the most common lengths used are the medium, short and extra short. These shaft lengths are the standards in the industry and are the lengths that will usually be found in any stores that carry dart supplies. There are in between sizes allowing for more customizing options and can be found in stores that carry a broad selection and cater to the serious enthusiasts.
Spinning shafts
Dart shafts are primarily made of aluminum or nylon and are available with a number of features: replaceable tops, adjustable lengths, extra-thin, EZ loading and rotating tops and by far the most popular added feature is the spinning shaft. The innovative spinning shaft top came as a major change in darts equipment 15 or more years ago with a needle shaft and a proprietary flight. In 1994 the “Top Spin” shaft took this concept one step farther by having the top of the shaft spin, rather than the special spinning flight, broadening its appeal by allowing any conventional flight to be used. The spinning top, while holding the flight, will rotate the flight out of the way when hit by an oncoming dart reducing deflections allowing for a tighter group resulting in higher scores. For example: if a dart is in the triple 20 when the next dart approaches and contacts the flight the flight revolves and the second dart slides in beside the first.
Flights
Similar to the various shaft lengths, the different shaped flights will have an affect on the aerodynamics of the trajectory of the dart. Flights are like the rudders on airplanes and boats and they help steer the dart to the board. There are 12 or more different shapes of flights and they all will affect your trajectory slightly or dramatically. A good starting place in choosing a flight is with the two most common shapes: “Standard” for steel tip darts and “Slim” for soft tip darts. A generalization is - the heavier steel tip dart needs a broader surface area to provide enough lift so the heavier dart tracks to the board and lands either horizontal to the floor or with a slightly upward angle. The lighter soft tip dart requires less lift and drag to make sure that when tracking to the board it lands horizontal to the floor and can find its way into the tapered hole. The steel tip player can put a severe arc on the dart trajectory to the board and the dart will still penetrate the sisal. A moderate arc on the trajectory of a soft tip dart thrown at an electronic dartboard would bounce out because of the angle of the surface holes on the board require the dart to be thrown on flat trajectory. The advantage of most electronic dartboards is that the machine will record the score even with the dart bouncing out.
Dart flights are made of plastic but there are various types, thickness and laminations that are esthetically pleasing. Most players enjoy choosing different designs, from the broad selection available.
Shafts and Flights breaking
Steel tip
The more proficient a player becomes, the more your flights and shafts will break. This happens because during the course of a game a player is throwing multiple darts at the same small target (bulls-eye or triple twenty). The goal to getting better at this game is to develop a repeatable throw that will produce a compact grouping of three darts at any given target. The skill of a player is demonstrated by the tightness of their group of three thrown darts thus the event of “Piggybacking or Robin Hooding” of darts (when one dart follows an earlier dart and follows the flight and sticks into the shaft of the earlier dart). Don’t despair if you start breaking your dart parts, as this is a sign that your skill level is improving.
Soft tip
Because the point is plastic and the darts weigh less, fewer incidences of piggybacking occur. However, the plastic points on soft tip darts break with regularity. Plastic dart points are inexpensive and you can buy these at most sporting goods stores by the 100’s.