I hope it was your own car you moron!

[steve_cronin]

Leicestershire is just about as far from the sea as you can get. So I was a bit surprised about the following:-

We have no kids at home now so we don't buy fireworks anymore. However, last night on St Rubbishburner's Night my wife and I took a stroll around the village to take advantage of other people's. Magnificent view not only of the displays from our village but from the surrounding ones too. Then suddenly whoosh!! big trail into the sky and a bright red light hung there around 150ft up. Yes, it was a parachute rocket. Having just mentioned to my wife how I had posted about the dangers of such on the "White Flares" thread on PBO forum, the timing couldn't have been better.

There wasn't much wind so it hung there for quite a long time but visible sinking slowly towards an isolated house which it illuminated impressively. Then about eight feet above the ground it stopped. I was aware, suddenly, that it had come to rest right in the middle of the roof of a Range Rover where it continued to burn for about 15 seconds. I was too far away and across a field and a stream to do anything helpful and nobody else seemed to be around. Afterwards of course the scene returned to darkness.

How many times do people have to be told that there is a fundamental difference between marine pyrotechnic signal flares and terrestrial display fireworks. That difference of course being that the former are designed for maximum burn time and rely upon the sea to extinguish them. Fireworks on the other hand are designed so that they are safely spent long before they return to earth.

A warning panel in ALL IPC magazines for the Nov 2004 issues Mr Gelder?

Steve Cronin



<hr width=100% size=1>The above is, like any other post here, only a personal opinion

 

[Cornishman]

A warning such as that you suggest would not go amiss, but I feel that in most cases where marine pyrotechnics are misused it is done by "non-boaties". The flares are readily available to anyone prepared to pay for them, and in one instance some years ago a para red fired horizontally across a League football match resulted in the death of a spectator on the other side of the ground. A murder trial followed, and as far as I can remember no "boaty" was involved.

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[milltech]

hoist by his own petard

On the subject of being the cause of ones own downfall I once played in a golf competition at Denham. Extra cars, overflow c.p. down the 18th. One in our foursome did a mighty slice and a "ping" was heard from the car park although neither ball or "pinged" vehicle were discovered.

After the prize giving, unusually I got one too, we walked out to our cars and he who sliced had a little ding right in the middle of his bonnet. Might not have been his slice what done it, but satisfactory to see all the same.



<hr width=100% size=1>John
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.allgadgets.co.uk>http://www.allgadgets.co.uk</A>

 

[steffen]

Thanks for renewing my awareness Steve. I was going to launche a red parachute flare at new years eve. Just to get a feel of how it is to fire such a thing.
In Holland we fire away about 20 million (no joke) worth of pyrotechnics at exactly 24:00 hours. From about 30 minutes the sky is literally saturated with all colors of flares, parachutes and other pyro stuff.

I will now fire it in the middle of farmland which borders my home and i will mind the wind.

Happy sailing, Steffen

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[Dave99]

Well???? What happened to the roof of the range rover? Apparently a red hand flare is hot enough to burn through a GRP deck.

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[steve_cronin]

Don't know. I havn't heard the local wardrums rattling yet. However, the weekend is upon us! Metal of course will conduct the heat away so less damage would be done than to a GRP deck. That is why a metal kettle works better than a plastic (or even chocolate?) one

Steve Cronin

<hr width=100% size=1>The above is, like any other post here, only a personal opinion

 

[[2574]]

Steve,

I was in Lezardrieux for Bastille day. We thankfully were in the inner marina, because the outer marina was glowing red for several minutes with hand flares being let off on yachts and there were also para flares fired from the marina. I was on bucket-of-water duty on the bow of my boat - but whether a bucket of water would do any good on a burning flare I doubt.

Rob

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[Birdseye]

was in a french marina for bastille day 2002 when drunken french kids (we dont have the monopoly on yobs) holding hand flares were trying to unlock the fuel dock pumps! they didnt succeed, but no one tried to stop them.

one new years eve party at the club, we let off most of the out of date rockets / flares the members carried. irresponsible, i know, but the interesting bit was that every full sized flare went off correctly, despite some being more than 20 years old and none being less than 10. the only ones that failed to function were the mini ones.

so much for the use by date.

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[Gunfleet]

You're dead right. I told off French kids for sitting on a WWII memorial. My French companions were amazed!

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[steffen]

RNLI excercise??

When i was in Ramsgate this august a white rocket flare was fired and the RNLI got out with a fast RIB. Now, i dont know if the rocket was the start of an excercise, but the emty alu shell came down. I saw it falling, falling and falling and oh no, it ended up in a cockpit of a boat further down the pier. Four people was having lunch in that cockpit and the shell landed in a bucket that stood between them and a few seconds earlier had a bottle of white wine in it. It scared the living s..t out of them.
I never though that such heavy material came down form firing such a rocket.

Happy sailing, Steffen

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