ST1DinOH Posted June 30, 2008 Posted June 30, 2008 so this weekend i'm messing around with a little pyro and got to thinkin... got these reloadable "UFO's" (mini girandolas) made by forward. all they are is a plastic "wheel" with 3 drivers mounted on the edges and a star insert mounted to the center spindle. the main fuse is a visco that sets off a very strange looking quick match (looked like braided hose but it was fabric) and it fed to all 3 drivers. one of the drivers then passed fire to a short length of standard craft paper tube quick match that passed fire to a single craft tube with a crackle effect loaded into it. what i did was just remove the center crackle effect charge (attached visco, lit and threw into river to chase awy geese) then attached the visco of one drive to the passfire port off the beck end of one of the drivers. so what happens here is i attached the "tops" of the girandolas to each other and i shielded the secondary giarandola's fuse using some duct tape. the idea is the first one starts to function sending the "pigeon" racing down the line to the end of the wire. one it gets there it'll pause for a second and then the second girandola stars up and sends it screaming back in the other direction. now sending a single one of these girandolas in the air it goes about 100 feet in the air then the display portion would function. by removing the crackle tube from the center i took a lot of weight off of it, and by setting it on a wire it doesn't need to work against gravity so i assume i should be able to cover some good distance with this double girandola pigeon. going to try to do one tonight, anyone have a recomendation on what type of wire to use, or how far i can expect these things to travel? the one concern i have is the center spindle is made to accept a dowel rod that will be much bigger than the wire. i was thinking of getting some metal tubing and inserting it into the center of the two then "shimming" the tube tight into the center with some toothpicks or something. is this necessary? the current center hole is about a 1/2 inch ID and the wire would be much smaller i'm sure. i'd like it to be near invisable at night if possible so it'll be much smaller than the hole in the girandolas. will that cause any problems?
Yankie Posted July 1, 2008 Posted July 1, 2008 When you put something on a string it goes a hell of a lot faster and further than if you were just shooting it into the sky, my advice is to just use some string, and make it very long, up to 50 metres, the bigger hole shouldnt make too much difference, but if its too wide or rough try and use pvc pipe or simialr and file the inside edge off so it runs smoothly, thats if you can get some that size. make sure you film it.
ST1DinOH Posted July 7, 2008 Author Posted July 7, 2008 When you put something on a string it goes a hell of a lot faster and further than if you were just shooting it into the sky, my advice is to just use some string, and make it very long, up to 50 metres, the bigger hole shouldnt make too much difference, but if its too wide or rough try and use pvc pipe or simialr and file the inside edge off so it runs smoothly, thats if you can get some that size. make sure you film it. i used a section of brake line for the axle and used 1/16th metal cable for the wire. withthat combination the reloadable mini girandolas could have easily gone 600 feet. very fast. got vid, it worked great and i'll be posting it as soon as i can.
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