Davis InstrumentsSpar-Fly

Nice spar-fly. We use as a secondary wind arrow as it is hard to see the wind-arrow on the top of our mast. Works well. We take it off between sails. It is somewhat delicate so you have to be careful when storing it. (You can't just throw it in a drawer.)

Wind vane works well in most wind conditions, but it was poorly packaged for such a relatively fragile device.

I've had six or eight of these over my life time of sailing different boats. I currently race dinghies on a shallow lake. I'm impressed at how often I've capsized while racing, stuck the Spar-Fly in the mud, bent the pivot rod, straightened it out and still had a working wind indicator. My previous one lasted three seasons, four capsizes, and still was working well as I won the club series. I decided that it was beat enough to retire with honors.

I bought this because I am a sailor. But I did not use it on a sailboat mast. I am instead using it as a lawn ornament. It does look nice in my garden as a centerpiece and conversation piece.

Great wind direction indicator for our deck

I bought this to do simple weather observations with my kindergarten age kids, and indicate wind direction. I didn't want a complex digital anemometer or something, just a simple pointer. I set it up on the bearing carefully and balanced it. I have mine mounted on a large melamine laminate base onto which is painted a big compass rose, that I orient with a magnetic compass.Unfortunately the wind tends to just spin this thing around in continual circles. While the bearings are obviously low enough friction, the indicator has a lot of mass and once the wind blows it, it just continues around under inertia. To get a steady reading in any particular direction, the wind has to be fairly strong and consistently blowing only one way. To indicate the direction of lighter gusts, the indicator needs bigger wind-catching vanes and less mass in the rotating assembly.I'm hoping this will work in upcoming observations, but so far it's proven worthless -- just spins around and around in circles continually.

This wind direction spar fly is so accurate it’s scary. I love it. Not very expensive but very accurate.

I live in rural Northern California where wildfires are an issue, and I'm on the local Fire Safe committee. One of the issues in our neighborhood is that there are a number of intersections with choices of which direction to go when evacuating. People are concerned that they won't know which direction to take. I bought three different designs of inexpensive wind indicators to test with the idea of putting them at these intersections. This is the only one where the rotating arrow points downwind, plus its bright orange color makes it the most visible. So it's the one we will use.

Just replaced the same one I had, I forgot to tighten the jam nut on my original, that was my fault. I like the Davis brand wind vane.