Vane Performance Overview

Picking vanes for a build is always a tradeoff between three things that don't cleanly agree with each other: how much drag the vane adds, how well it steers, and how loud the arrow is in flight.

For the prior round of vane testing, see the 2025 Vane Performance Overview.

Every vane in this article was tested on the same standard-speed rig: 28″ draw length, 70# draw weight, ~450gr arrows, ~290 fps out of a Hoyt AX3 33. Each build was measured on three axes:

• Aerodynamic Drag: calculated drag constant from synced chronograph readings at 0.5, 30, and 60 yards. Lower drag means less drop, less wind drift, and more energy carried downrange. Lower is better.
• Restorative Lift: how well the vane steers a fixed-blade broadhead back to where a field point would have hit. We torqued the bow laterally to simulate a bad shot, then shot a group of Iron Will Wide fixed-blade broadheads and a group of Gold Tip field points under the same torque, and measured the lateral distance between the two groups at 70 yards. The smaller that distance, the more restorative lift the vane provided. Lower is better.
• Vane Noise: overall peak loudness in flight, weighted two ways (A-weighting for humans, deer-weighting for whitetails). A 10dB increase is roughly a doubling of perceived loudness. Lower is better.

For full details on the test methods, group capture, and analysis processes, check out the Methods page.

Hover over the dots in any plot to see the build configuration and results details.

We lead with group size plots because they are intuitive and relatable, but statistically speaking, mean radius is the better metric to compare.

For any plots referencing group sizes, restorative lift, etc., you can click on the dots to see the group photos annotated with mean radius and 95% confidence intervals.

The chart below is the one to start with. Each dot is one of the 24 builds in the test, with drag on Y, restorative lift on X, and deer-weighted loudness as color. Bottom-left and yellow is the corner you want.

If you only check out one chart on this page, make it this one.

The chart below shows the drag constant for every vane build in the test, with 95% confidence intervals.

Drag is the cost of every vane. More drag means more drop, more wind drift, and less retained kinetic energy at distance. Even small differences in drag constant compound at long range.

Restorative lift is what we call the vane's ability to steer an arrow given imperfect launch conditions.

To measure it, we induced a repeatable lateral torque at full draw (roughly equivalent to a 1in paper tear at 15ft) and shot two groups under that same torque: one with Iron Will Wide fixed-blade broadheads, one with Gold Tip field points. The chart below is the lateral distance between those two groups at 70 yards.

A smaller distance means more restorative lift: the vane is doing more work to keep the broadhead steering with the field point under bad-shot conditions. Lower is better.

Restorative lift is our primary measure of a vane's performance, but we also looked at the group size and mean radius of those fixed-blade groups under torque.

The first plot below is group size (extreme spread): the easy-to-picture metric. The second is mean radius: the more statistically honest one. Both are lower-is-better, both have 95% confidence intervals, and both are computed from the same shots.

One question worth asking: are the builds with less restorative lift also the builds that group looser?

The scatter below puts mean radius on Y and restorative lift on X, one dot per build.

The correlation is weak due to the small sample sizes and insignificant differences in group sizes overall, but there is a slight trend.

Two listeners care how loud your arrow is in flight: you, and the deer. They don't hear the same things, so we weight the same peak SPL recording two ways.

A-weighting reflects what your ears are most sensitive to (mostly mid-range frequencies). Deer-weighting reflects what whitetails are most sensitive to (more weight on the higher frequencies a spinning vane is loudest at). A 10dB increase is roughly a doubling of perceived loudness.

The deer chart is first, since that's the listener you actually care about in the field. The human chart is right behind it for context.

Overall peak loudness is the headline number, but it can hide a lot. Two builds can share the same A-weighted SPL while being loud at different frequencies, and a deer won't hear them the same way.

The plot below is the deeper-dive view: pick any subset of builds and overlay their full 1/3-octave SPL spectra. Switch the weighting between Z (raw), A (human), and Deer to see how each listener experiences the same signal.

No vane is best on every axis. Every build is a compromise; the right compromise depends on what you're trying to optimize for.

The big-picture chart at the top is the easiest place to find a build that lands close to your priority profile. The per-axis charts give you the per-build numbers and confidence intervals when you're narrowing down a short list.

A caveat:

• All vane testing was done on the standard-speed rig (~290 fps) on one type of arrow shaft. Builds that look great here may shift on a faster setup or different arrow shaft.