| Another life experience: fireworks |
[Jul. 5th, 2009|09:46 pm]
jbm
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Last night, i helped load and shoot a hand-fire fireworks show. For my part, they were 3" mortar shells, each a sphere of explosive and salts with a little chunk of explosive at the bottom, called a lifting charge. This is all dropped into a special plastic tube (the mortar), with a length of quickmatch fuse up and out of the mortar. The fuse burns at 100~300 feet per second, and it's about 3 feet long. That gives you a burn time of, well, zero.
So, after everything is loaded, and the stadium lights are turned out, it's showtime. You don the nomex flightsuit your awesome hostess has loaned you, then get handed an automotive flare. You crouch a few feet from the mortar and wait for the guy running the show to call out "three!" Then you touch the flare to the bottom of the fuse and FSKBOOM there's a serious explosion right next to you, you pull the guard off the next fuse, and skooch forward, waiting for the next call. Every so often, one of your fellow shooters walks behind you and knocks burning paper off your back.
It's, uh, intense. And fucking incredible. I could've gone again tonight, but i kind of needed some me-time this weekend. I'm kind of regretting it, since they should be shooting right about now, but, oh well.
(A huge thank you to  ladykalessia, who got me on-site and loaned me a dead-sexy safety suit.) |
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