Archery
Topic: Sports
Archery has been around for a very long time, though not always as a sport. The first real archery competitions were held by the ancient Greek, but they were also used for fighting and hunting (even before then!). Archery works by a simple and fundamental law of load. You pull back on the string, and the farther you pull it back, the more it will try to snap forward, and that is what it will do when you release it. Bow's strengths are rated in their weight, which is how hard it is to pull back the string (IE, a 10 pound bow would feel like lifting 10 pounds to draw it back) There are 2 classes of bow, plus the crossbow.
BASIC BOW
A basic bow is just that, a basic bow with no extra strings attached :P These tend to be cheaper and easier to make, but are harder to hold at higher weights, and do not go as high in weight as composites.
COMPOSITE BOW
Composite bows use pulleys to get higher weight ratings, and they also allow you to "lock out" the string once it is pulled all the way back, so that you can aim easier. While much more expensive, I would recommend them to anyone who is remotely serious about doing archery, because they grant you major advantages over their more basic brethren.
CROSSBOW
Crossbows are the easiest to use of the bows, but aren't as fun. They are horizontal bows mounted on a stock, and you lock the string back, place an arrow, aim, and fire. They are the most powerful, but take out much of the difficulty and challenge of archery. They are great in medieval warfare, though!
Posted by todd101scout
at 7:33 AM PDT
Updated: Friday, 4 August 2006 7:43 AM PDT
Gun shooting
Topic: Sports
Shooting guns has been around since, well, when the Chineese discovered gunpowder, then later on Europeans began to make guns with it, using saltpeter at first. Now, guns have developed into a wide variety, some not even using gunpowder (such as airsoft and paintball guns), while others use 300 pounds of gunpowder per shot (battleship cannons) gun is roughly translated from germanic as "war sword"
Types of guns
Some of the most prominent types of guns include:
rifles, hand-cannons(extremely powerful handguns), handguns, cannons, AA, and shotguns.
Rifles: any gun with a stock and rifling in its barell. Has good accuracy and is very portable. Of course, the rifles were developed from smoothbores, which were rifles, except without the grooves in the barrell. These were much less accurate, and had a much shorter range. Rifles were not mass-produced until the American Civil War.
Hand-Cannons: basically, any pistol that really makes your hands and arms hurt after you fire it. Very few hand guns have earned this honor, one being the 9mm Desert Eagle (just me, it is powerful!)
Handguns: Also reffered to as "pistols" (first used for easily concealable knives), handguns are easily hidden and very portable guns that lack the accuracy or range of larger guns. They are commonly categorized into 3 categories: One-shot, revolvers, and semi-automatic.
Cannons: Any gun that shoots at land targets that is too big to be carried by a single person, cannons (aka artillery) have been used since the napoleonic era. They can be used to batter the enemy before they can reach you, and the efficient use of them has been known to turn the tide of battle.
AA: Anti-aircraft guns can be hand-held (such as infantry launched stingers) or can be mobile, or even permanent structures in the ground. They were invented in the first world war, when aircrafts first came into military use.
Shotguns: Basically a rifle, the only 2 major differences are the lack of grooves and what it shoots. While rifle fire is a single ball, shotgun bullets are masses of tiny 'shot' that covers a wide area. Sometimes the barrell will be sawed off to increase the spread, at the cost of range.
Posted by todd101scout
at 12:01 AM PDT
Updated: Friday, 4 August 2006 7:30 AM PDT
