Beach Shoot #18 - Firefly Flying Hummers
Date: 2004-01-03
Description
Yet another Z-bomb like device.
Standard 25 mm long, 12.5 mm ID thick walled hummer tube. Wax threated clay end plugs, 1.8 mm vent hole, tangental and pointed down at 45 degrees. Fused with thin blackmatch and meal-NC paste.
The propellant this time was BP meal with an added 10% of Skylighter's firefly Aluminium flitters. Experimental composition, true firefly has additional charcoal and somewhat different KNO3/S/C ratios.
Comments
They flew well.
Not as high or fast as usual, not suprising considering 10% of the propellant was Aluminium flakes with no other adjustment of the composition.
Didn't produce blue-white fireflys in the tail as was hoped. However the Aluminium did produce some long-lived orange sparks in the tail effect compared to the straight meal used in previous devices.
I am unsure if the extra charcoal is important for producing the firefly effect, or if it purpose is just to produce charcoal effect. I've read somewhere that Aluminium Carbide production in the flame is important to the firefly effect, but I've never found the source publication that was referencing. If true, it suggests excess charcoal is critical to the effect.
I have produced firefly effect in Fe rich gerbs with added flitters, and in greenmix and milled 'Skylighter style' Firefly composition, so perhaps it has something to do with the application I am trying to use it in. Much the same way that spherical Al containing RP gives different effects based on its application. More experimentation is required!
Attachments
| title | type | size |
|---|---|---|
| Test Video #1 | video/x-msvideo | 290.034 kbytes |
| Test Video #2 | video/x-msvideo | 288.738 kbytes |
| Pre-Test Picture (both units) | image/jpeg | 27.857 kbytes |