With the tails attached, do you re-balance your flags?
I balance my flags without the tails on. This way they come out slightly tail heavy when I attach the tails, and not so twitchy.
Very good Joe!
Balancing flags indoors gives a good static balance but what we want is for it to be dynamically balanced...i.e., as in use. As wind speed increases, the center of pressure moves forward, particularly with a daisy or pinwheel style flag, due to the area and drag that the surface area of the daisy has. For the flag to be stable, not twitchy, the center of pressure has to stay behind the center of gravity. The problem here is that the wind is always doing something different. Ideally, the flag is perfectly balanced in the wind but that's a moving target. When in doubt, err towards being a tad tail heavy. Tails play a role in the flag being stable by both adding weight and area at the rear.
My flags come balanced for use with a sail tail for this reason. I balance them to pretty much 50/50 BEFORE adding the tail. This is a very good balance for most conditions we shoot. If it's a tad twitchy, a small adjustment to the pivot point will smooth it out. Moving the pivot 1/8" forward is a pretty big adjustment on my flag. So, if your range typically has 15+mph winds, I would advise this. It really gives up very little performance in lighter winds like this. The keys are light weight and very low friction, particularly side load on the pin. That's why I use small pivot pins and teflon pivot adapter material. I'm kinda a flag geek, you could say, but I have never seen a better flag.
