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Commercial display effects


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Posted (edited)

We don´t happen to have much fireworks around here, but yesterday there were two displays at about the same time. So I rushed from one to the other, having a look for unknown effects.

 

Here are some things I found in both displays:

 

- the brocade (FeTi/Ti type) is used excessively, while there was no single glitter

 

- most of the round shells (I think they were fired from those 3" chinese cake boxes) broke enormously hard. I assume this was to compensate for the short effect duration - with those charges they gave a large break nonetheless. As soon as you realized that the shell had broken, it had already reached its full diameter. I can´t think of any charge apart from flash that would break a shell that hard. I use H3, but even that´s still gentle compared to what I´ve seen. I wouldn´t say I liked the breaks very much, but I´m curious what they´re using - any ideas? (are there round shells with flashbags?)

 

- the stated round shells used stars displaying intense color and a brocade tail at the same time, originating already from the center.. Given what I saw were round stars, I´m not sure how this is possible (maybe with excess metal). More likely those shells used something like pumped married comets (must have been very small for use in a 3"er) Any other ideas?

Edited by AdmiralDonSnider
Posted

- most of the round shells (I think they were fired from those 3" chinese cake boxes) broke enormously hard. I assume this was to compensate for the short effect duration - with those charges they gave a large break nonetheless. As soon as you realized that the shell had broken, it had already reached its full diameter. I can´t think of any charge apart from flash that would break a shell that hard. I use H3, but even that´s still gentle compared to what I´ve seen. I wouldn´t say I liked the breaks very much, but I´m curious what they´re using - any ideas? (are there round shells with flashbags?)

There's something to be said for good pasting and solid filling. I've seen many a shell with a larger and harder straight BP break than comparable shells using a booster. BP has more than enough energy to accelerate stars faster than you can easily follow them if properly confined. Or they could have been boosted to save the effort. You can't know for sure without cutting one open.

Posted
I too have seen the same thing at a show I attended on the third 3rd of July. Those things would really break hard and couldn't imagine how they would even lite at that hard of a break. They looked like low altitude 4"ers or something because they broke hard and big and the stars were intense. I would like any ideas on this too...
Posted

Those could have been 2 or 2.5" shells as well. They break hard with flash (or some type of KP burst and quite a lot of pasting), because it has to compensate the little burst volume in the shell. Also, the stars are smaller and can not contain enough kinetic energy from the burst to travel through the air so far, this is another reason to break these little shells hard.

 

Those collored stars are color composition of any kind with an addition of ferrotitanium 250-425 micron (4approx 40-60 US mesh), about 6% or something. Very likely these are rolled.

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