Wiley's Shells

[Wiley]

Got some stuff in the air for the 4th. All of the 1.75" shells were shot from 15" long DR11 consumer mortars, and all the 3" were shot from 18" long HDPE with measly 1.5" thick plugs, even the last two, which weighed just a hair over a pound each. The mortars all survived, and everything looked ok, except for the draw-outs, which were spoiled due to a silly building mistake.

 

All the 3" shells you see, with the exception of the break-and-report, were made with the rinfasciature method on July 3rd and shot the following night. All of them were boosted with 3g of 35:35:30, well, except for the one at 1:40. I went to add the usual 4g of booster to the 30ish grams of 3FA that fit in the canulle, and realized that I only had .7g in there. Crap. Not to worry, I had a small tub of Kbenz whistle handy. Because it was whistle I knew I'd need more, so I added 5g to the cup, looked at it for a minute, then decided, "Oh what the hell, let's add some more!" I think there was about 7 something grams of whistle in there, along with the little pinch of flash. What didn't fit in the canulle I settled into the voids between stars like pulverone. Sure broke big.

 

I'm fully underwhelmed by my blue, which is Phiko blue. It's too pale and timid, even on its own. I need to look for a brighter and bluer replacement.

 

The biggest problem, once again, was smoldering crap raining down. I never had this problem when the shells were just finished with gummed tape, but all of these ones were finished with a paste wrap and had some sort of smoldering debris make it all the way to the ground. This was usually a fused disk or a bottom disk with the spiking clinging to it. The exception was the 3" break-and-report.

 

The rin shells did a bit better. The only smoldering crap that I got from those was little bits of spiking with the broken ends still glowing. Many of them had no fallout. Regardless, I need to find a solution to the problem, since it made lighting these a bit of a pain.

 

Anyway, here's the vid. Let me know what you think.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKk8sPY9N4M&feature=youtu.be

[rogeryermaw]

nice work wiley! looks like you had a beautiful display. i got rained out. hoping for this weekend.

[Sparx88]

Nice work. I trying to join the cool kids club lately been working with can shells and multi breaks. I got some things that need improving still having a good time with them.

 

About a better blue comp you could try this one out that mumbles turned me on to it's a Hardt comp and one I use still. Theres room for added alum or magnal 2-4 grams. Nice solid blue.

 

Potassium Perchlorate - 62

Sulfur - 18

Copper Oxide - 12

Parlon - 4

Dextrin - 4

[Wiley]

Sparx, thanks for the formula; I may just try that blue.

[PIL]

Sulfur fueled blue stars are always more blue than resin fueled ones.