It was very good to see a T.V. program which emphasised the draw weight required for a English longbow (used in war) and pointed out how the arrow gains speed as it drops which a lot of people dont realise
Unlike a lot of programs I see where they talk of "the mighty longbow" then show someone shooting a 50lb butt bow ;-)
e.g. I saw a program on Channel 4 last year where they "demonstrated" that the arrow from an English Warbow would bounce off a dead pig - how could no one involved in making this program not have questioned this 
??
BTW - I know from talking to a few people who have been on such programs that the info. they eventually put out is often not what the archer/bowyer had told them etc.
so whatever was said by the T.V. program don't hold Steve responsible
Alan, of course you are right its en-ter-taaaain-ment and should be viewed in that way. Also, programme makers don't give editorial control to contributers. The problem is that my post on the velocities achieved was in response not to the video link but to a post from Stevesjem in which he categorically stated that arrow speeds were 180mph on leaving the bow and the same or even higher on arrival at the target. He then deleted his own post (quite why the moderators tolerate this behaviour is beyond me!) when I pointed out that this simply could not be right. What I think happened is that confusion arose because of use of mph and f/s at different ends of the arrows arc. At the beginning, with a decent archer and a decent bow it is about 180f/s and at the end its 100mph (or 147f/s) at least with some arrow types.
Apropos of nickf's post which I responded to - I should point out that the higher speeds at the end of 'Warbow' with the lighter arrow were actually at about 5.6grain per pound at which 210 f/s was achieved as an initial velocity so that kind of sets the upper limit of speed for a light war type arrow in a 150lb longbow.
You are right that an arrow speeds up as it descends - but that is true of all arrows. They start off with lots of kinetic energy, convert it to mostly potential energy at the apex of their flight and then they descend and convert all that potential energy back into kinetic energy - almost. No system is entirely efficient and at the point of arrival, some energy will have been lost, mostly to friction with the air and that is why velocities are lower on arrival of the arrow. If you want to avoid loss of energy, you need to go to outer space or somewhere else where there is a vacuum.
Hope that clears up any confusion.
Chris
