Walter & Group....
This is Simon Gawesworth's answer to Dermon Sox' question on shooting heads, overhang, and "hinging".
Gordy
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Hi Gordy, hi Dermon
Thanks for sending this on to me, Gordy, and thanks for the queries, Dermon. There are a couple of things relevant to this:
Shooting line
Take a shooting head with a body diameter of, say 0.060" (a typical #8 body) attached to a hard nylon shooting line like Amnesia or SlickShooter. There is so much weight difference between the two lines that, in flight, when the line is being shot and the "shoot speed" starts to slow down, the heavier shooting head is being pulled down by gravity and the thin, light shooting line has no mass to hold it up. As a result, the line lands rear end first and loses distance.
If you attach a shooting head with a back taper to the same running line, so that the diameters and weight become more balanced, the flight time is noticably longer because it does not get dragged down by this weight discrepancy. This is very obvious when playing with line designs and, in particular, shooting head designs. Of course, you get less of an effect with a thicker shooting line, so one could argue that it is the shooting line, not the shooting head that it to blame!
Overhang
The bigger the difference between the mass of the shooting head and the mass of the shooting line, the shorter the overhang has to be. The energy from the fly rod will not transmit into the shooting head through a long, thin connection (the shooting line), nor will that long thin connection have enough mass in itself to pass energy into the head.
I don't call that hinging. Hinging is something different. Hinging is when you have good energy running through a line that comes to an area where the energy is disapated, then asked to power up to carry on the required task. A perfect example of this is cutting a fly line in half and then joining it together again via long braided loops. The energy runs out in the lighter braided loops, but is still needed to turn over the rest of the line - which it can't.
I can see why it could be thought of as hinging - having too much overhang with a shooting head - but as it is a sort of "hinge" between the energy generated from the rod, trying to pass through a poor conductor (the shooting line) to the head. However, technically this is an energy transfer issure, rather than a hinge. A subtle difference and quite tricky to explain, I know, but it is clear enough in my head!
Not sure if this helps or not, but hope so.....
Cheers
Simon