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Message started by jeffbonds on Oct 19th, 2016 at 11:32pm

Title: question on long slings
Post by jeffbonds on Oct 19th, 2016 at 11:32pm
i made a 4 and a halfish foot sling the other day when its fully opened its a hair over 9 ft but anyway i haven't gotten any more range with it than i have with my normal slings that dwarf in comparison i get pretty much the same range with a lot less accuracy and im not sure what it is im useing objects of pretty much the same size and weight to what i normally throw do i need to go heavier

Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by curious_aardvark on Oct 20th, 2016 at 7:07am
lol - distance acheived is down to the soeed of the pouch at release.

So a shorter sling that you can swing faster will send a missile further than a really long awkward sling you can't swing well at all.

There is a limit on how long a sling is practical and you also need a special technique to use a very long sling effectively.

For me around 40 inches is the longest I can realistically use.
Larry bray used a 50inch sling for the world record and that's the hardest sling technique to master I've ever seen.  After 8 years I still haven't cracked it.

I would say that 40-45 inches would be the maximum practical length for a sling. Anything much longer and you're just not going to get the same pouch speed.

Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by Parmenion on Oct 20th, 2016 at 7:44am
how thin are the cords you are using?

below are some not scientifically confirmed thoughts

the rotational speed one can achieve with a longer sling seems to be less than that of a shorter one
but the speed is same or more because of the bigger radius


long slings are harder to rotate and increase rotational speed
to have a good throw the rotational speed of the sling and the speed of your hips,core,arms should match somehow
this becomes a little difficult because the longer sling needs less  force for the same projectile weight and more velocity and/or length of acceleration which you cannot easily increase.

your body can apply certain amount of force at certain amount of speed , when one increases the other decreases,
the optimal length would be somewhere where the force and speed meet .
so if you have already reached the max velocity of your arms with a sling then making a longer one will require more speed(you cant achieve)with less force , putting more force it will be just wasted as jerky movements so you lower the output energy.

it's like detuning your body

furthermore longer slings seem to need more stamina and shorter more power to use


you can also just practice different styles (pirouette) with which you can apply different amount of forces at different speeds
or practice more with the same style until you get used to the differences of longer slings


Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by jeffbonds on Oct 20th, 2016 at 11:36am
yeah getting the thing in motion isnt all that hard for me i use a discus like spin how they spin around when they throw i do two helicopter like spins over my head to get the thing moving and one full body spin and throw so thats why accuracy is down cause i spin the with of the cord is the same as my other slings about a half inch thick my thoughts were its a bigger lever kinda thing and levers are force multipliers if i got it going itd have a high output

Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by Parmenion on Oct 20th, 2016 at 2:24pm
half inch thick! wow thats huge
3-6mm is big enough to cause considerable drag at such long slings
my last long slings had 0.2mm and 0.4mm thick cords

Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by jeffbonds on Oct 20th, 2016 at 3:36pm
well its a braided sling it opens up slow of course on release

Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by Parmenion on Oct 21st, 2016 at 3:50am
my regular length slings are all around 6 mm
the 3-6mm cord slings are made with linen and it is braided
the 0.2 and 0.4mm are dyneema
try to make a smaller braid

Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by curious_aardvark on Oct 21st, 2016 at 11:36am
My favourite diameter for sling cord is 3mm.
I'll often use 4mm as it's cheap :-)

My distance sling has 2mm cords and a perforated rubber 3d printed pouch for thinness and low mass (weighs about 1.5 grams) and aerodynamism.

Body spinning techniques are usually slow and weak as they are limited to how fast you can spin your body.
It will never be as fast as you can spin a shorter sling with your arm.   

Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by Bill Skinner on Oct 21st, 2016 at 4:51pm
Spinning your body is to more get huge honking rocks the size of a brick up to speed so your arm/shoulders can take over and move it faster.

Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by wanderer on Oct 22nd, 2016 at 1:39am
These long sling questions always end up being mixed in with a complete change of technique to stuff like pirouettes which makes discussion pretty hard to pin down.

The bottom line is that if you were to attempt to keep the same throwing form and increase the length of the sling say 20% you need to scale up the movements of your hand by about the same figure, 20%. You could say that is the argument for the recommendations for choosing the sling length according to your height, or length of arm etc etc.

That's fine as far as it goes, but air resistance gets in the way and destroys the scaling. The more you can reduce the air resistance effects the more chance you have of maintaining that linear scaling. You can do that with the efforts to cut down on the drag of the sling, or by increasing the weight of the projectile, which brings the trailing angle (as Aussie used to call it) back more towards the values for a shorter sling, which lets you to keep the same form.

Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by Parmenion on Oct 22nd, 2016 at 10:33am

wanderer wrote on Oct 22nd, 2016 at 1:39am:
trailing angle


what is it?

Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by jeffbonds on Oct 23rd, 2016 at 8:38pm
thanks for all the help im fine with learneing new throwing fourms i have about 6 or 7 that i can throw with and i practice with them all so adding one more isnt bad the reason i like knowing more than one way of throwing is i can teach people to throw and some people like some styles better than others so if ik lots of styles i can teach them something better for them kinda thing

Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by curious_aardvark on Oct 24th, 2016 at 11:22am
Well this is currently the best sling style for distance ever recorded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvmpyzL4wd4

This guy is larry bray, who holds the current traditional distance slinging world record.
Not a tall guy and using a very long sling.

He makes that sling style look easy. It really isn't :-)

Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by jeffbonds on Oct 24th, 2016 at 10:15pm
i actually throw that way as when i am throwing mid range i hadnt tried it for long range but that is the same thing that i came up with on my own when i started slinging before i learned more historically accurate throwing forms like beleric and greek
thanks for the video ill try the throw for long range

Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by wanderer on Oct 26th, 2016 at 9:00am
@Parmenion,

'Trailing angle' - the angle between the sling cord and the direction of travel of the hand, or rather the complement of that, so 'small' when the sling is being dragged around, and it opens up to larger values up to about 90 degrees at release.

At least that's as I remember it :).

Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by curious_aardvark on Oct 26th, 2016 at 9:54am
there are no historically accurate slinging styles.

Nobody has the faintest idea what styles our ancestors used.

Logic would dictate that they slung with the same styles we use.
balearic/sidearm is one many people come up with on their own - I certainly did. So that's pretty much a given.

But everything else - just wild guesses based on some artistic poses on vases and the like. :-)

Historians don't like applying logic or common sense to things our ancestors might have done,  :whistle:

Title: Re: question on long slings
Post by jeffbonds on Oct 26th, 2016 at 4:40pm
thanks for the help

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