Sight Tapes

Overview

This section will guide you through the process of creating a sight tape for your bow. We'll also discuss the various options at your disposal and offer troubleshooting tips for common issues.

Prerequisites

Before creating a sight tape, you'll need to have completed the following:

• Add your bow
• Add your arrow
• Sight-in your setup

Creating a Sight Tape

Start by navigating to the 'Sight Tape' page within the application. Choose the specific bow you want to create a sight tape for, followed by the arrow.

Computing the Marks

Next, it's time to compute the marks for the tape. This involves choosing the density altitude (air density) for the sight tape, as well as setting a starting and ending range.

Note

If your starting range is less than the highest mark on your sight tape (typically 12-14 yards for most setups), we will truncate the sight tape at this highest mark. This is due to the 'parallax error' that occurs between your arrow height and peep height. At ranges closer than your highest mark, you'll need to aim with a mark further down the tape. For example, at 2 yards, you might need to use your 80 mark. This is why the sight height measurement is crucial. To calculate how to aim for ranges closer than the highest mark, check out the short range conversions section.

After selecting your density altitude, ranges, and range increment click "Compute Marks". In the background, each mark is run through our arrow trajectory model and precisely placed on the tape.

Once the marks are set, we can start customizing the tape.

Customizing the Tape

To customize, expand the 'Sight Tape Settings' section and adjust according to your preferences. The sight tape will update in real-time as you make changes.

Note

We've done our best to provide reasonable default sight tape dimensions sights. However, we haven't physically measured every sight out there. If our default dimensions aren't quite right for your sight, we'd appreciate it if you could let us know and we can update the default sizing in the application to make the process easier for others!

Note

When you print a sight tape with customized settings, we save these settings for you. These are tied to the particular sight model you are using, so when you create future tapes for the same sight model, your custom settings will be applied automatically.

Printing the Tape

When you're satisfied with your custom tape, it's time to print! We currently offer three printing modes:

1. Standard Mode

   • This will print 3 copies of the sight tape on our standard printing page. This page includes notes about the bow and arrow setup, sight tape settings used for creating the sight tape for future reference, and a scale checker to ensure the sight tape was printed at the correct scale.

2. Sight-In Mode

   • Sight-in printing mode will print 5x different scaled sight tapes by slightly tweaking the sight-in mark measurement(s) by 0.003" from what was supplied during the sight-in process. These are intended to be used to compare to your shot-in marks. See below for more information on tape verification.

   • The purpose here is to remediate potential measurement error from the sight-in process.

   • Once you've found a perfect match, update your sight-in measurements with the new measurements, if needed.

   • Note: Today we offer this option only if mark distances were supplied with a caliper measurement or our calibration tape. We're deciding on the best approach to offer this sort of idea for those who use target sight marks for the sight-in process.

3. Custom Position Mode

   • This allows you to specify the precise location of a sight tape on a printed page. This is particularly useful for those printing on label paper and want to control the precise location of the tape on the page or if you want to conserve paper by printing multiple tapes on a single page at different locations over time.

   • The position is defined to the upper-left corner of the tape. For example, if 1 inch from top and 1 inch from left are specified, the top of the tape will be 1 inch from the top of the page, and the left side of the tape will be 1 inch from the left of the page.

4. Travel Tapes Mode

   • This mode will print 5x sight tapes in either 1000ft density altitude or 1.0fps launch speed increments to bring with you. This is a great way to have a few tapes made ahead of time for different conditions.

   • This mode is particularly useful for those who travel to different locations for shoots or hunts.

Info

Ensure you print at 100% scale and do not select 'scale to fit'. This will keep the sight tape's scale accurate.

We recommend initially printing in sight-in or default mode on plain printer paper to verify everything prints to the correct scale and to verify the tape is as you desire. Once confirmed, then it's time to print in custom position mode onto your desired fancy paper!

Click 'Download PDF', and a PDF will be generated and downloaded for you to print.

Remember – set the scale to 100% for accurate printing! Notice the scale setting in the screenshot below. The location of this setting may vary depending on the web browser / PDF viewer you are using. Google Chrome is pictured.

Verifying the Tape

Once your tape is printed, it's crucial to verify its accuracy.

Step 1: Scale Check
Start by checking the scale. For this, you can use either a US quarter or credit card - each of these objects should fit precisely within the printed outline.

You could also employ a caliper or the calibration tape to confirm that the marks on the sight tape correspond with the measurements you input during the sight-in process.

One last check is to ensure the printed tape matches the dimensions specified in the sight tape settings.

Note

The scale checker is primarily used for ensuring 100% scale was selected when printing. We have not seen a case where 100% was used and the tapes did not come out at the right scale. If you're sure 100% was selected, you should be good to go!

Step 2: Verify Marks
With the scale confirmed, move on to verify the marks on your printed tape. The most straightforward method is to align your printed tape with your sight-in tape, ensuring the marks align accurately.

As mentioned above, we offer a sight-in printing mode that prints tapes using slightly different mark measurements than what was supplied during the sight-in process. These are intended to be used to compare to your shot-in marks and finely tune the sight-in measurements if needed to get a perfect match. Note that these sight-in tapes should be printed for the same density altitude (air density) as the sight-in process was performed at.

Tip

If the sight tape is generated for the same density altitude as the sight-in process, the marks should line up perfectly with the sight-in marks. For example, if the distance between 40 and 80 on the sight-in tape is 0.737 inches, the distance between those marks on the printed tape should measure exactly 0.737 inches. If it does not, this is almost certainly a printing scale issue or due to error in the caliper measurement. Use the sight-in mode shown above to fine-tune your sight-in measurements by comparing each tape to your sight-in marks!

Note

If you're generating a tape for a different density altitude (air density) than what was used during the sight-in process, it's expected that the marks will not line up perfectly with your sight-in marks. This is due to the change in air density. We suggest verifying a tape at the sight-in locations's air density, and then generating a new tape for the desired density altitude (air density) once you're sure the printing is working properly and your data was entered correctly.

If you utilized target sight marks during the sight-in process, a quick method to verify accuracy is by aligning the tape with the scale on the sight. Alternatively, mount the printed tape to the sight and ensure each sight-in range aligns with the corresponding target sight mark you input during the sight-in process.

Step 3: Shoot It!
Once all the above steps have been completed and everything checks out, it's time to mount the sight tape onto the sight and test it out. After mounting, shoot several arrows at different ranges. This will allow you to adjust your indicator for accuracy and validate the other marks on the tape.

Tip

When first shooting with your new tape, we recommend starting with the ranges you used for sight-in. This will allow you to validate the accuracy of the sight-in marks one more time. Once you've confirmed the sight-in marks are accurate, you can move on to testing the other marks on the tape.

If the marks you used for sight-in are shooting perfect, but some other marks on the tape aren't quite right - for example, you used 40 and 80 for sight in marks, but your 20, 50, or 120 marks aren't quite right - this is most likely an issue with one of the bow or arrow specifications. Double check your peep height, sight radius, and arrow weight inputs.

Tip

If you've triple-checked all of your inputted data and still can't get your marks to work out properly, one last thing to check is the accuracy of your rangefinder. It's not uncommon for rangefinders to have some error, and sometimes this error can be fairly significant (a yard or more!). In addition, most rangefinders will give different readings depending on target color. Double check ranges with a buddy's rangefinder, or better yet, measure with a long tape measure if you have one.

Printing Tips and Paper Recommendations

We always recommend printing on plain printer paper first to verify everything is working properly. Once you've confirmed everything is working and the tape is coming out right, it's time to print on your desired fancy paper with the 'Custom position' printing mode.

For weatherproof paper recommendations, check out our FAQ section here.