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Easter Time!


aquaman

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I just picked up a couple of packages of easter eggs (36?). The eggs are kinda small (a little more than a inch). What are some pyro uses?

 

I know one is aerial shells and for those that have tried them how well do they work? I seen some bad videos of them only getting like 20ft, but than I've seen some good ones. So how well do they work for aerial shells?

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I love easter eggs for shells. I can send them higher than commerical ones with enough lift. I dont really notice too much difference between commercial plastic ball shells and the easter egg shells. Simple, easy, cheap and available....why not use them? B)

Plus they come in all sizes and you could even use the colors to label the color of the shell.

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Sweet so the eggs were a good buy ($2).

 

Can't the eggs also be used as a payload for BP rockets?

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There's no reason why not. You got a size not generally used. There are some that fit into commercial mortars pretty well, and I've heard about ones that can be put into 2.5" or 3" mortars. With the size you have they won't fit into any mortar I know of. Perhaps 1.5". I think the ones you have would be better suited for rocket headers.
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When I decide to make a few aerial shells I probably make 4-5 mortar tubes. I was thinking of the demensions of around 1.5 ft long, a I.D. of like 1 3/8 inch and maybe a little more than an 1/8 of an inch wall thickness. Any changes or additions?
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I started with Teknix's tutorial, and I like it, but I have changed a few things to fit my tastes. I use thinner aluminum flashing tape for spiking, I glue the seams together and I use 1/2" of taped visco. What these changes do : less friction when being shot out of the mortar, so less stress on the shell thus less flowerpotting. Gluing the seams makes a better break, and 1/2" of taped visco is much more accurate timing than 1" of untaped visco.

 

Also, instead of adding a lift cup and quickmatch, I just pour the ammount of lift down the mortar ( one of those commercial paper ones ) and insert the fuse through a hole drilled in the side. It doesn't mess up the time fuse either because the time fuse is only sticking 1/4" out of the bottom of the shell.

 

Doing them like this takes very little effort. I personally like these shells to break fairly low in the sky so I can see them well. The mortar friction is important because if you shoot the shell to hard it can break through and flowerpot. So find your balance between shell height without a hard shot.

 

Here is the result of using a full inch of untaped visco for timing.

http://www.apcforum.net/files/Lowbreak.WMV

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Easter eggs can be used as shells. However, Polyethylene or 'soft plastic' shells can break somewhat unsymmetrically if too litle burst is used. You might also want to spike them with one cross of glassfiber tape or similar.

 

Here is a video of a 1,5" easter egg shell filled with C6 and Red KP stars. 1/8" visco as time fuse and about 15 grams 2FA BP as lift.

I just love the 'poor mans brocade' effect by those chracoal stars.

 

http://www.pyrosource.com/video/easter_egg.avi

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Yeah I actually make my shells a little different from my tutorial as well now but I'm just too lazy to rewrite it. I also wrap tape around the fuse to hold it better on the shell when i glue it and to prevent it from catching fire on the side and to hole BP priming on the end of it. And I use a cone paper cup now too with about 5-7g lift depending how high i want the suckers to go. And yeah you gotta watch with the spiking not to get it too thick or it will be hard to fit in your mortar. And I also now use a little pouch of BP or flash as break and i just jab it onto the end of the fuse inside the shell. I'm always modifying things trying to make it better and/or easier. I don't think I do anything on my site the way I explain it anymore hahaha I should make an updated one someday.
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justanotherpyro what stars did you use in that shell?

A non-antimony glitter modification. I substituted 200-300 mesh Al flakes ( exact mesh is unknown because I ground it down from Al foil) for the spherical Al, and tweaked the NaHCO3 %. It glitters a bit more in the full length video, but I said some things that need to stay unknown to the public. :rolleyes:

 

It was a real shame that it didn't burst at apogee. It was the only one that worked fairly well as far as spread and symetry. Most of the others flowerpotted. I've since fixed that though. ^_^

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I found out tonight that pasting these horizontally 3 or 4 times works wonders for a symetrical break.
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