It's that time of year again : )

WARNING: IF YOU ARE HUMOR IMPAIRED *DO NOT* READ ANY FURTHER



Happy 4th

IT'S A MAN THING

About 2 weeks ago, I was looking around the Web for the BIGGEST sky
rocket that I could get shipped to me via common freight carrier. I
located a fireworks importer in Wisconsin who had this mondo sky
rocket--biggest thing I had ever seen--called a SkyDragon. These things
are 48 inches tall and are mounted on a 1/2-inch wooden dowel. Pure
aerospace engineering.

I plopped down a bunch of money and had him send me two cases of these
things. They arrived at the freight dock a few days ago and I had to
drive the van over to pick them up. Two boxes each 2 feet by 2 feet by 4
feet in size containing 80 rockets each. The 'Class 4 Explosives'
sticker on the side of each box was a real bonus. I am gonna have to save
them for the scrapbook.

That night, me and the kiddos had a gen-u-ine rocket launch ceremony. I
placed one of these beauties in a liter-size glass bottle and the bottle
fell over. Hmmmm- this thing was waaay too big. I looked around the shop
for a pipe to set it in, but realized that the only dirt I could drive the
pipe into was in plain sight of my neighbor's house. I knew he was a cool
guy, but I didn't want him to call the cops. You see- 'projectile-type'
fireworks are totally illegal in this county. I was surprised that the
Buncombe County Sheriff Department wasn't waiting for me at the loading
dock when I picked these things up. Anyhow, I finally rigged a launch pad
by prying up one of the driveway drain grates with a crowbar and sitting
the stick into the deep pit. Looked sorta like an ICBM silo with its
hardened lid slid aside.

I asked which of my three kids wanted to light the fuse, but all took a
few steps back and politely declined. Chicken****s. Kids just aren't
made the same nowadays. They fulfill their danger quotient by shooting
bad guys in video games. About as far from real danger as you can get, if
you ask me.

I told the little weenies to stand back as I bent to light the device
with a Bic lighter.

The lady at the fireworks importer promised me that these things would
NOT make any noise. I told her that they HAD to be relatively quiet so I
could shoot them off in my neighborhood without causing 'undue alarm'. She
said I wouldn't have any problem. I emphasized the particular legal
problems I would have if there were any type of loud report at apogee. I
emphasized the fact that I lived right next to a National Park and that
any type of firework that was discharged or assumed to be discharged on
that property would get me sent before a FEDERAL judge right before I got
sent to the COUNTY judge. She again assured me I would have no problem.

That lying bitch.

That rocket engine had a burn time about as long as any I had EVER seen,
and the ascent echoed off the surrounding trees. Diamond shock pattern
extended from the back end. It kept going and going and going. When it
hit apogee at about 1000 feet, the rocket disintegrated into a huge
shower of silent red sparks. Pretty cool, I thought......until the shower
of sparks burned out and suddenly transformed into a cloud of extremely
bright and loud explosions. The kids scrambled into the back door 'Three
Stooges' style (ie: where all three try to get through the same closed
door at once) and left me standing in the smoking haze waiting for the
cops to arrive. The dogs that live along our street were all barking their
heads off at the apparition they had just witnessed in the night sky

That ended the fireworks test for the night.

The next day, my oldest son Doug and I decided we were gonna 'neuter' one
of the rockets so it wouldn't make any noise. I took him into the closet
where I store the gardening tools and he saw these two huge cases of
fireworks standing there. The kid went nuts. He wanted to open BOTH
boxes so he could see what all 159 rockets looked like lined up next to
each other. This kid has promise. I told him: "Since mom only thinks I
have a few of these things lying around, maybe that wasn't such a good
idea." He mulled that over for a few seconds, then gave me a real big
smile in agreement.

We pulled one of the rockets out of the box and re-locked the closet
door.

He and I both sat down on the driveway and proceeded to take it apart. It
was a standard issue big-ass Chinese sky rocket. I bet they used these to
kill people 500 years ago. As I sat there taking layer after layer of
paper off, his brain was filling with the details of construction. Tissue,
cardboard, plastic, fuses...etc. Realizing that he was mentally storing
the design for some future project sorta made me shudder. All I was
thinking was the fact that this thing was probably put together by a
political prisoner in a hellhole somewhere who is probably gonna get
'executed' so they can sell his internal organs on the transplant market.

Probably not too far from the facts, but I managed to do a bit of
explaining to him from the standpoint of aerospace engineering regarding
how the thing worked. Doug is probably the only 4th grader in the U.S.
who can now describe the principle of thrust using a control volume model.

The rocket was pretty simple. It had a very large booster engine topped
with a warhead that contained the red sparkly things that exploded.
Removing the warhead was as simple as giving a quick twist, and I assumed
the neutered rocket would fly higher without the payload. I was correct.
Doug and I did a daylight 'stealth' test and were able to add about 50% to
the altitude attained the previous night. We decided to modify four more
rockets and put them aside in the closet for easy access. When this was
done, Doug had a jar full of stuff that came out of the warheads
including: 12 fuses about 3-inches long each, some paper, 4 plastic
nosecones and a big handfull of these little black balls about the size of
12-gauge buckshot that turned out to be the 'red sparkly popper things'.
It appeared that the outer layer was a simple gunpowder coating designed
to quickly burn off as red shower of sparks. I surmised that the inner
core had some kind of magnesium thermite that gave off an intense white
light and a loud bang. Pretty cool if you ask me. Lots of energy packed
into one teeny little ball.

I didn't want to see the popper thingies go to waste, so I told Doug we
were gonna put them in a hole in the ground and set them off. He gave me
another big smile.

It's amazing how kids think alike...even when separated by 30 years.

As I was digging a shallow hole with my hand, Doug asked if it would be
alright to put an army man next to these things so that "When they go off,
it would look like he was getting shot with a maching gun".
Dang....exactly what I was thinking. I agreed and he ran off to his room
to dig something out of the mess. He returned in about 3 seconds, out of
breath and holding a cheap plastic imitation of Robert E. Lee on
horseback and a Civil War cannon. I pointed out that they didn't have
true machine guns in the Civil War, but we would overlook this for the
purpose of the demonstration. He handed me the action figure and I placed
it and the cannon next to a rather large pile of black beads from which a
few of the fuses extended.

I figured that three inches of fuse would take 2 seconds to burn, so I
had at least that amount of time to stand up and take a few steps back. I
neglected to recount the night before.....when the warhead ignited
IMMEDIATELY upon reaching apogee. Tricky Chinese. They had installed
extremely fast-burning fuse in these things and that fact totally escaped
me.

I squatted next to Robert Lee and gave a short eulogy. Doug laughed. I
took the trusty Bic lighter and placed it next to the fuse. One flick got
the lighter going and THIS IMAGE IS ONE I WILL REMEMBER FOR A LONG TIME.
My hand holding a lighter next to a pile of explosives.

There is usually a short but noticeable mental pause that occurs
immediately before something bad or really stupid happens. It is where
that little voice in your head says: "You dumbass."

The fuse burn time was in the 1/1000ths of a second range. The pile of
little popper thingy's immediately ignited into a tremendously brilliant
ball of fire. All I could think was ..."...th....th.....thermite..."
Unfortunately, when they are viewed at ground level, these little popper
thingies become REALLY BIG POPPER THINGIES and have a tendency to jump up
to 15-feet in every direction from their point of ignition. I
instantaneously became engulfed in a ball of fire that sounded a lot like
being in a half-done bag of Orville Reddenbacher's popcorn.

It was all over about as fast as I could snap my fingers.

After the smoke cleared, Doug started laughing his butt off. That meant
I was still in one piece. Doug does not laugh at dismembered limbs. He
said I jumped about 10-feet, an action that I do not remember. I checked
my clothes for burn marks, and found none. He checked my back to make
sure it was not on fire. No combustion there. The driveway was peppered
with black holes where the concrete had been scarred from these things.

A close one. Another REAL close one. My mind ran the tapes again to
re-hash what it had seen. All I remembered was being inside something
akin to a 30-foot diameter........flaming dandelion. Whew.

We examined Ol' Robert E. at ground-zero.

Instead of a machine-gun peppering, he got nuked. He and the horse he
rode in on.......and his cannon too. One side was untouched, but the
other side was arc-welded. Real warfare. Doug examined it real
quiet-like and then started laughing again.

I assume he will remember the finer points of the lesson as he grows
older. When I now speak of 'almost being burned beyond recognition' he
will have a slightly better understanding of what I mean. I hope that
this vivid image tempers the knowledge he now has regarding rocket
construction. O well. After all, if your dad isn't gonna teach you how to
get your ass blown off, who will?

ChairMan wrote:
It's that time of year again : )

WARNING: IF YOU ARE HUMOR IMPAIRED *DO NOT* READ ANY FURTHER



Happy 4th

IT'S A MAN THING

About 2 weeks ago, I was looking around the Web for the BIGGEST sky
rocket that I could get shipped to me via common freight carrier. I
located a fireworks importer in Wisconsin who had this mondo sky
rocket--biggest thing I had ever seen--called a SkyDragon. These
things are 48 inches tall and are mounted on a 1/2-inch wooden dowel.
Pure aerospace engineering.

I plopped down a bunch of money and had him send me two cases of these
things. They arrived at the freight dock a few days ago and I had to
drive the van over to pick them up. Two boxes each 2 feet by 2 feet
by 4 feet in size containing 80 rockets each. The 'Class 4 Explosives'
sticker on the side of each box was a real bonus. I am gonna have to
save them for the scrapbook.

That night, me and the kiddos had a gen-u-ine rocket launch ceremony.
I placed one of these beauties in a liter-size glass bottle and the
bottle fell over. Hmmmm- this thing was waaay too big. I looked
around the shop for a pipe to set it in, but realized that the only
dirt I could drive the pipe into was in plain sight of my neighbor's
house. I knew he was a cool guy, but I didn't want him to call the
cops. You see- 'projectile-type' fireworks are totally illegal in
this county. I was surprised that the Buncombe County Sheriff
Department wasn't waiting for me at the loading dock when I picked
these things up. Anyhow, I finally rigged a launch pad by prying up
one of the driveway drain grates with a crowbar and sitting the stick
into the deep pit. Looked sorta like an ICBM silo with its hardened
lid slid aside.
I asked which of my three kids wanted to light the fuse, but all took
a few steps back and politely declined. Chicken****s. Kids just aren't
made the same nowadays. They fulfill their danger quotient by shooting
bad guys in video games. About as far from real danger as you can
get, if you ask me.

I told the little weenies to stand back as I bent to light the device
with a Bic lighter.

The lady at the fireworks importer promised me that these things would
NOT make any noise. I told her that they HAD to be relatively quiet
so I could shoot them off in my neighborhood without causing 'undue
alarm'. She said I wouldn't have any problem. I emphasized the
particular legal problems I would have if there were any type of loud
report at apogee. I emphasized the fact that I lived right next to a
National Park and that any type of firework that was discharged or
assumed to be discharged on that property would get me sent before a
FEDERAL judge right before I got sent to the COUNTY judge. She again
assured me I would have no problem.
That lying bitch.

That rocket engine had a burn time about as long as any I had EVER
seen, and the ascent echoed off the surrounding trees. Diamond shock
pattern extended from the back end. It kept going and going and
going. When it hit apogee at about 1000 feet, the rocket
disintegrated into a huge shower of silent red sparks. Pretty cool, I
thought......until the shower of sparks burned out and suddenly
transformed into a cloud of extremely bright and loud explosions. The
kids scrambled into the back door 'Three Stooges' style (ie: where
all three try to get through the same closed door at once) and left
me standing in the smoking haze waiting for the cops to arrive. The
dogs that live along our street were all barking their heads off at
the apparition they had just witnessed in the night sky
That ended the fireworks test for the night.

The next day, my oldest son Doug and I decided we were gonna 'neuter'
one of the rockets so it wouldn't make any noise. I took him into the
closet where I store the gardening tools and he saw these two huge
cases of fireworks standing there. The kid went nuts. He wanted to
open BOTH boxes so he could see what all 159 rockets looked like lined up
next
to each other. This kid has promise. I told him: "Since mom only
thinks I have a few of these things lying around, maybe that wasn't
such a good idea." He mulled that over for a few seconds, then gave
me a real big smile in agreement.

We pulled one of the rockets out of the box and re-locked the closet
door.

He and I both sat down on the driveway and proceeded to take it
apart. It was a standard issue big-ass Chinese sky rocket. I bet they
used these to kill people 500 years ago. As I sat there taking layer
after layer of paper off, his brain was filling with the details of
construction. Tissue, cardboard, plastic, fuses...etc. Realizing that
he was mentally storing the design for some future project sorta made
me shudder. All I was thinking was the fact that this thing was
probably put together by a political prisoner in a hellhole somewhere
who is probably gonna get 'executed' so they can sell his internal
organs on the transplant market.
Probably not too far from the facts, but I managed to do a bit of
explaining to him from the standpoint of aerospace engineering
regarding how the thing worked. Doug is probably the only 4th grader
in the U.S. who can now describe the principle of thrust using a
control volume model.
The rocket was pretty simple. It had a very large booster engine
topped with a warhead that contained the red sparkly things that
exploded. Removing the warhead was as simple as giving a quick twist,
and I assumed the neutered rocket would fly higher without the
payload. I was correct. Doug and I did a daylight 'stealth' test and
were able to add about 50% to the altitude attained the previous
night. We decided to modify four more rockets and put them aside in
the closet for easy access. When this was done, Doug had a jar full
of stuff that came out of the warheads including: 12 fuses about
3-inches long each, some paper, 4 plastic nosecones and a big
handfull of these little black balls about the size of 12-gauge
buckshot that turned out to be the 'red sparkly popper things'. It
appeared that the outer layer was a simple gunpowder coating designed
to quickly burn off as red shower of sparks. I surmised that the
inner core had some kind of magnesium thermite that gave off an
intense white light and a loud bang. Pretty cool if you ask me. Lots
of energy packed into one teeny little ball.
I didn't want to see the popper thingies go to waste, so I told Doug
we were gonna put them in a hole in the ground and set them off. He
gave me another big smile.

It's amazing how kids think alike...even when separated by 30 years.

As I was digging a shallow hole with my hand, Doug asked if it would
be alright to put an army man next to these things so that "When they
go off, it would look like he was getting shot with a maching gun".
Dang....exactly what I was thinking. I agreed and he ran off to his
room to dig something out of the mess. He returned in about 3
seconds, out of breath and holding a cheap plastic imitation of
Robert E. Lee on horseback and a Civil War cannon. I pointed out that
they didn't have true machine guns in the Civil War, but we would
overlook this for the purpose of the demonstration. He handed me the
action figure and I placed it and the cannon next to a rather large
pile of black beads from which a few of the fuses extended.

I figured that three inches of fuse would take 2 seconds to burn, so I
had at least that amount of time to stand up and take a few steps
back. I neglected to recount the night before.....when the warhead
ignited IMMEDIATELY upon reaching apogee. Tricky Chinese. They had
installed extremely fast-burning fuse in these things and that fact
totally escaped me.

I squatted next to Robert Lee and gave a short eulogy. Doug laughed. I
took the trusty Bic lighter and placed it next to the fuse. One flick
got the lighter going and THIS IMAGE IS ONE I WILL REMEMBER FOR A
LONG TIME. My hand holding a lighter next to a pile of explosives.

There is usually a short but noticeable mental pause that occurs
immediately before something bad or really stupid happens. It is where
that little voice in your head says: "You dumbass."

The fuse burn time was in the 1/1000ths of a second range. The pile of
little popper thingy's immediately ignited into a tremendously
brilliant ball of fire. All I could think was
..."...th....th.....thermite..." Unfortunately, when they are viewed
at ground level, these little popper thingies become REALLY BIG
POPPER THINGIES and have a tendency to jump up to 15-feet in every
direction from their point of ignition. I instantaneously became
engulfed in a ball of fire that sounded a lot like being in a
half-done bag of Orville Reddenbacher's popcorn.
It was all over about as fast as I could snap my fingers.

After the smoke cleared, Doug started laughing his butt off. That
meant I was still in one piece. Doug does not laugh at dismembered limbs.
He
said I jumped about 10-feet, an action that I do not remember. I
checked my clothes for burn marks, and found none. He checked my back
to make sure it was not on fire. No combustion there. The driveway
was peppered with black holes where the concrete had been scarred
from these things.
A close one. Another REAL close one. My mind ran the tapes again to
re-hash what it had seen. All I remembered was being inside something
akin to a 30-foot diameter........flaming dandelion. Whew.

We examined Ol' Robert E. at ground-zero.

Instead of a machine-gun peppering, he got nuked. He and the horse he
rode in on.......and his cannon too. One side was untouched, but the
other side was arc-welded. Real warfare. Doug examined it real
quiet-like and then started laughing again.

I assume he will remember the finer points of the lesson as he grows
older. When I now speak of 'almost being burned beyond recognition' he
will have a slightly better understanding of what I mean. I hope that
this vivid image tempers the knowledge he now has regarding rocket
construction. O well. After all, if your dad isn't gonna teach you
how to get your ass blown off, who will?

ROTFLMAO !!!

--
Snag

On Monday, July 4, 2016 at 3:54:14 PM UTC-4, Terry Coombs wrote:
ChairMan wrote:
It's that time of year again : )

WARNING: IF YOU ARE HUMOR IMPAIRED *DO NOT* READ ANY FURTHER



Happy 4th

IT'S A MAN THING

About 2 weeks ago, I was looking around the Web for the BIGGEST sky
rocket that I could get shipped to me via common freight carrier. I
located a fireworks importer in Wisconsin who had this mondo sky
rocket--biggest thing I had ever seen--called a SkyDragon. These
things are 48 inches tall and are mounted on a 1/2-inch wooden dowel.
Pure aerospace engineering.

I plopped down a bunch of money and had him send me two cases of these
things. They arrived at the freight dock a few days ago and I had to
drive the van over to pick them up. Two boxes each 2 feet by 2 feet
by 4 feet in size containing 80 rockets each. The 'Class 4 Explosives'
sticker on the side of each box was a real bonus. I am gonna have to
save them for the scrapbook.

That night, me and the kiddos had a gen-u-ine rocket launch ceremony.
I placed one of these beauties in a liter-size glass bottle and the
bottle fell over. Hmmmm- this thing was waaay too big. I looked
around the shop for a pipe to set it in, but realized that the only
dirt I could drive the pipe into was in plain sight of my neighbor's
house. I knew he was a cool guy, but I didn't want him to call the
cops. You see- 'projectile-type' fireworks are totally illegal in
this county. I was surprised that the Buncombe County Sheriff
Department wasn't waiting for me at the loading dock when I picked
these things up. Anyhow, I finally rigged a launch pad by prying up
one of the driveway drain grates with a crowbar and sitting the stick
into the deep pit. Looked sorta like an ICBM silo with its hardened
lid slid aside.
I asked which of my three kids wanted to light the fuse, but all took
a few steps back and politely declined. Chicken****s. Kids just aren't
made the same nowadays. They fulfill their danger quotient by shooting
bad guys in video games. About as far from real danger as you can
get, if you ask me.

I told the little weenies to stand back as I bent to light the device
with a Bic lighter.

The lady at the fireworks importer promised me that these things would
NOT make any noise. I told her that they HAD to be relatively quiet
so I could shoot them off in my neighborhood without causing 'undue
alarm'. She said I wouldn't have any problem. I emphasized the
particular legal problems I would have if there were any type of loud
report at apogee. I emphasized the fact that I lived right next to a
National Park and that any type of firework that was discharged or
assumed to be discharged on that property would get me sent before a
FEDERAL judge right before I got sent to the COUNTY judge. She again
assured me I would have no problem.
That lying bitch.

That rocket engine had a burn time about as long as any I had EVER
seen, and the ascent echoed off the surrounding trees. Diamond shock
pattern extended from the back end. It kept going and going and
going. When it hit apogee at about 1000 feet, the rocket
disintegrated into a huge shower of silent red sparks. Pretty cool, I
thought......until the shower of sparks burned out and suddenly
transformed into a cloud of extremely bright and loud explosions. The
kids scrambled into the back door 'Three Stooges' style (ie: where
all three try to get through the same closed door at once) and left
me standing in the smoking haze waiting for the cops to arrive. The
dogs that live along our street were all barking their heads off at
the apparition they had just witnessed in the night sky
That ended the fireworks test for the night.

The next day, my oldest son Doug and I decided we were gonna 'neuter'
one of the rockets so it wouldn't make any noise. I took him into the
closet where I store the gardening tools and he saw these two huge
cases of fireworks standing there. The kid went nuts. He wanted to
open BOTH boxes so he could see what all 159 rockets looked like lined up
next
to each other. This kid has promise. I told him: "Since mom only
thinks I have a few of these things lying around, maybe that wasn't
such a good idea." He mulled that over for a few seconds, then gave
me a real big smile in agreement.

We pulled one of the rockets out of the box and re-locked the closet
door.

He and I both sat down on the driveway and proceeded to take it
apart. It was a standard issue big-ass Chinese sky rocket. I bet they
used these to kill people 500 years ago. As I sat there taking layer
after layer of paper off, his brain was filling with the details of
construction. Tissue, cardboard, plastic, fuses...etc. Realizing that
he was mentally storing the design for some future project sorta made
me shudder. All I was thinking was the fact that this thing was
probably put together by a political prisoner in a hellhole somewhere
who is probably gonna get 'executed' so they can sell his internal
organs on the transplant market.
Probably not too far from the facts, but I managed to do a bit of
explaining to him from the standpoint of aerospace engineering
regarding how the thing worked. Doug is probably the only 4th grader
in the U.S. who can now describe the principle of thrust using a
control volume model.
The rocket was pretty simple. It had a very large booster engine
topped with a warhead that contained the red sparkly things that
exploded. Removing the warhead was as simple as giving a quick twist,
and I assumed the neutered rocket would fly higher without the
payload. I was correct. Doug and I did a daylight 'stealth' test and
were able to add about 50% to the altitude attained the previous
night. We decided to modify four more rockets and put them aside in
the closet for easy access. When this was done, Doug had a jar full
of stuff that came out of the warheads including: 12 fuses about
3-inches long each, some paper, 4 plastic nosecones and a big
handfull of these little black balls about the size of 12-gauge
buckshot that turned out to be the 'red sparkly popper things'. It
appeared that the outer layer was a simple gunpowder coating designed
to quickly burn off as red shower of sparks. I surmised that the
inner core had some kind of magnesium thermite that gave off an
intense white light and a loud bang. Pretty cool if you ask me. Lots
of energy packed into one teeny little ball.
I didn't want to see the popper thingies go to waste, so I told Doug
we were gonna put them in a hole in the ground and set them off. He
gave me another big smile.

It's amazing how kids think alike...even when separated by 30 years.

As I was digging a shallow hole with my hand, Doug asked if it would
be alright to put an army man next to these things so that "When they
go off, it would look like he was getting shot with a maching gun".
Dang....exactly what I was thinking. I agreed and he ran off to his
room to dig something out of the mess. He returned in about 3
seconds, out of breath and holding a cheap plastic imitation of
Robert E. Lee on horseback and a Civil War cannon. I pointed out that
they didn't have true machine guns in the Civil War, but we would
overlook this for the purpose of the demonstration. He handed me the
action figure and I placed it and the cannon next to a rather large
pile of black beads from which a few of the fuses extended.

I figured that three inches of fuse would take 2 seconds to burn, so I
had at least that amount of time to stand up and take a few steps
back. I neglected to recount the night before.....when the warhead
ignited IMMEDIATELY upon reaching apogee. Tricky Chinese. They had
installed extremely fast-burning fuse in these things and that fact
totally escaped me.

I squatted next to Robert Lee and gave a short eulogy. Doug laughed. I
took the trusty Bic lighter and placed it next to the fuse. One flick
got the lighter going and THIS IMAGE IS ONE I WILL REMEMBER FOR A
LONG TIME. My hand holding a lighter next to a pile of explosives.

There is usually a short but noticeable mental pause that occurs
immediately before something bad or really stupid happens. It is where
that little voice in your head says: "You dumbass."

The fuse burn time was in the 1/1000ths of a second range. The pile of
little popper thingy's immediately ignited into a tremendously
brilliant ball of fire. All I could think was
..."...th....th.....thermite..." Unfortunately, when they are viewed
at ground level, these little popper thingies become REALLY BIG
POPPER THINGIES and have a tendency to jump up to 15-feet in every
direction from their point of ignition. I instantaneously became
engulfed in a ball of fire that sounded a lot like being in a
half-done bag of Orville Reddenbacher's popcorn.
It was all over about as fast as I could snap my fingers.

After the smoke cleared, Doug started laughing his butt off. That
meant I was still in one piece. Doug does not laugh at dismembered limbs.
He
said I jumped about 10-feet, an action that I do not remember. I
checked my clothes for burn marks, and found none. He checked my back
to make sure it was not on fire. No combustion there. The driveway
was peppered with black holes where the concrete had been scarred
from these things.
A close one. Another REAL close one. My mind ran the tapes again to
re-hash what it had seen. All I remembered was being inside something
akin to a 30-foot diameter........flaming dandelion. Whew.

We examined Ol' Robert E. at ground-zero.

Instead of a machine-gun peppering, he got nuked. He and the horse he
rode in on.......and his cannon too. One side was untouched, but the
other side was arc-welded. Real warfare. Doug examined it real
quiet-like and then started laughing again.

I assume he will remember the finer points of the lesson as he grows
older. When I now speak of 'almost being burned beyond recognition' he
will have a slightly better understanding of what I mean. I hope that
this vivid image tempers the knowledge he now has regarding rocket
construction. O well. After all, if your dad isn't gonna teach you
how to get your ass blown off, who will?

ROTFLMAO !!!


a lifetime ago i was dating this gal. we went to ohio and returned with the most expensive fireworks package they sold. called the general lee i renamed it the souths revenge.

my gal friend lit a spinner, it was supposed to spin on the ground. but it took off and went across the street. a window was open. the spinner hit the window frame, and fell on the porch roof.......

lucky because their was no screen in the window and no one was home.... if it had entered it would of set the house on fire.

sadly despite my best efforts sharon wouldnt marry me. her 50th birthday was yesterday, july 3rd. my current girl friend decorated me with birthday stuff and tried giving me to my lod girl friend......

her dad was my high school vo tech electronics teacher. i first met him around 1974
--
Snag

On Monday, July 4, 2016 at 2:38:30 PM UTC-5, ChairMan wrote:
It's that time of year again : )

WARNING: IF YOU ARE HUMOR IMPAIRED *DO NOT* READ ANY FURTHER



Happy 4th

IT'S A MAN THING

About 2 weeks ago, I was looking around the Web for the BIGGEST sky
rocket that I could get shipped to me via common freight carrier. I
located a fireworks importer in Wisconsin who had this mondo sky
rocket--biggest thing I had ever seen--called a SkyDragon. These things
are 48 inches tall and are mounted on a 1/2-inch wooden dowel. Pure
aerospace engineering.

I plopped down a bunch of money and had him send me two cases of these
things. They arrived at the freight dock a few days ago and I had to
drive the van over to pick them up. Two boxes each 2 feet by 2 feet by 4
feet in size containing 80 rockets each. The 'Class 4 Explosives'
sticker on the side of each box was a real bonus. I am gonna have to save
them for the scrapbook.

That night, me and the kiddos had a gen-u-ine rocket launch ceremony. I
placed one of these beauties in a liter-size glass bottle and the bottle
fell over. Hmmmm- this thing was waaay too big. I looked around the shop
for a pipe to set it in, but realized that the only dirt I could drive the
pipe into was in plain sight of my neighbor's house. I knew he was a cool
guy, but I didn't want him to call the cops. You see- 'projectile-type'
fireworks are totally illegal in this county. I was surprised that the
Buncombe County Sheriff Department wasn't waiting for me at the loading
dock when I picked these things up. Anyhow, I finally rigged a launch pad
by prying up one of the driveway drain grates with a crowbar and sitting
the stick into the deep pit. Looked sorta like an ICBM silo with its
hardened lid slid aside.

I asked which of my three kids wanted to light the fuse, but all took a
few steps back and politely declined. Chicken****s. Kids just aren't
made the same nowadays. They fulfill their danger quotient by shooting
bad guys in video games. About as far from real danger as you can get, if
you ask me.

I told the little weenies to stand back as I bent to light the device
with a Bic lighter.

The lady at the fireworks importer promised me that these things would
NOT make any noise. I told her that they HAD to be relatively quiet so I
could shoot them off in my neighborhood without causing 'undue alarm'. She
said I wouldn't have any problem. I emphasized the particular legal
problems I would have if there were any type of loud report at apogee. I
emphasized the fact that I lived right next to a National Park and that
any type of firework that was discharged or assumed to be discharged on
that property would get me sent before a FEDERAL judge right before I got
sent to the COUNTY judge. She again assured me I would have no problem.

That lying bitch.

That rocket engine had a burn time about as long as any I had EVER seen,
and the ascent echoed off the surrounding trees. Diamond shock pattern
extended from the back end. It kept going and going and going. When it
hit apogee at about 1000 feet, the rocket disintegrated into a huge
shower of silent red sparks. Pretty cool, I thought......until the shower
of sparks burned out and suddenly transformed into a cloud of extremely
bright and loud explosions. The kids scrambled into the back door 'Three
Stooges' style (ie: where all three try to get through the same closed
door at once) and left me standing in the smoking haze waiting for the
cops to arrive. The dogs that live along our street were all barking their
heads off at the apparition they had just witnessed in the night sky

That ended the fireworks test for the night.

The next day, my oldest son Doug and I decided we were gonna 'neuter' one
of the rockets so it wouldn't make any noise. I took him into the closet
where I store the gardening tools and he saw these two huge cases of
fireworks standing there. The kid went nuts. He wanted to open BOTH
boxes so he could see what all 159 rockets looked like lined up next to
each other. This kid has promise. I told him: "Since mom only thinks I
have a few of these things lying around, maybe that wasn't such a good
idea." He mulled that over for a few seconds, then gave me a real big
smile in agreement.

We pulled one of the rockets out of the box and re-locked the closet
door.

He and I both sat down on the driveway and proceeded to take it apart. It
was a standard issue big-ass Chinese sky rocket. I bet they used these to
kill people 500 years ago. As I sat there taking layer after layer of
paper off, his brain was filling with the details of construction. Tissue,
cardboard, plastic, fuses...etc. Realizing that he was mentally storing
the design for some future project sorta made me shudder. All I was
thinking was the fact that this thing was probably put together by a
political prisoner in a hellhole somewhere who is probably gonna get
'executed' so they can sell his internal organs on the transplant market.

Probably not too far from the facts, but I managed to do a bit of
explaining to him from the standpoint of aerospace engineering regarding
how the thing worked. Doug is probably the only 4th grader in the U.S.
who can now describe the principle of thrust using a control volume model.

The rocket was pretty simple. It had a very large booster engine topped
with a warhead that contained the red sparkly things that exploded.
Removing the warhead was as simple as giving a quick twist, and I assumed
the neutered rocket would fly higher without the payload. I was correct.
Doug and I did a daylight 'stealth' test and were able to add about 50% to
the altitude attained the previous night. We decided to modify four more
rockets and put them aside in the closet for easy access. When this was
done, Doug had a jar full of stuff that came out of the warheads
including: 12 fuses about 3-inches long each, some paper, 4 plastic
nosecones and a big handfull of these little black balls about the size of
12-gauge buckshot that turned out to be the 'red sparkly popper things'.
It appeared that the outer layer was a simple gunpowder coating designed
to quickly burn off as red shower of sparks. I surmised that the inner
core had some kind of magnesium thermite that gave off an intense white
light and a loud bang. Pretty cool if you ask me. Lots of energy packed
into one teeny little ball.

I didn't want to see the popper thingies go to waste, so I told Doug we
were gonna put them in a hole in the ground and set them off. He gave me
another big smile.

It's amazing how kids think alike...even when separated by 30 years.

As I was digging a shallow hole with my hand, Doug asked if it would be
alright to put an army man next to these things so that "When they go off,
it would look like he was getting shot with a maching gun".
Dang....exactly what I was thinking. I agreed and he ran off to his room
to dig something out of the mess. He returned in about 3 seconds, out of
breath and holding a cheap plastic imitation of Robert E. Lee on
horseback and a Civil War cannon. I pointed out that they didn't have
true machine guns in the Civil War, but we would overlook this for the
purpose of the demonstration. He handed me the action figure and I placed
it and the cannon next to a rather large pile of black beads from which a
few of the fuses extended.

I figured that three inches of fuse would take 2 seconds to burn, so I
had at least that amount of time to stand up and take a few steps back. I
neglected to recount the night before.....when the warhead ignited
IMMEDIATELY upon reaching apogee. Tricky Chinese. They had installed
extremely fast-burning fuse in these things and that fact totally escaped
me.

I squatted next to Robert Lee and gave a short eulogy. Doug laughed. I
took the trusty Bic lighter and placed it next to the fuse. One flick got
the lighter going and THIS IMAGE IS ONE I WILL REMEMBER FOR A LONG TIME.
My hand holding a lighter next to a pile of explosives.

There is usually a short but noticeable mental pause that occurs
immediately before something bad or really stupid happens. It is where
that little voice in your head says: "You dumbass."

The fuse burn time was in the 1/1000ths of a second range. The pile of
little popper thingy's immediately ignited into a tremendously brilliant
ball of fire. All I could think was ..."...th....th.....thermite..."
Unfortunately, when they are viewed at ground level, these little popper
thingies become REALLY BIG POPPER THINGIES and have a tendency to jump up
to 15-feet in every direction from their point of ignition. I
instantaneously became engulfed in a ball of fire that sounded a lot like
being in a half-done bag of Orville Reddenbacher's popcorn.

It was all over about as fast as I could snap my fingers.

After the smoke cleared, Doug started laughing his butt off. That meant
I was still in one piece. Doug does not laugh at dismembered limbs. He
said I jumped about 10-feet, an action that I do not remember. I checked
my clothes for burn marks, and found none. He checked my back to make
sure it was not on fire. No combustion there. The driveway was peppered
with black holes where the concrete had been scarred from these things.

A close one. Another REAL close one. My mind ran the tapes again to
re-hash what it had seen. All I remembered was being inside something
akin to a 30-foot diameter........flaming dandelion. Whew.

We examined Ol' Robert E. at ground-zero.

Instead of a machine-gun peppering, he got nuked. He and the horse he
rode in on.......and his cannon too. One side was untouched, but the
other side was arc-welded. Real warfare. Doug examined it real
quiet-like and then started laughing again.

I assume he will remember the finer points of the lesson as he grows
older. When I now speak of 'almost being burned beyond recognition' he
will have a slightly better understanding of what I mean. I hope that
this vivid image tempers the knowledge he now has regarding rocket
construction. O well. After all, if your dad isn't gonna teach you how to
get your ass blown off, who will?

TERRORIST! I'm gonna tell my mom. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle Rocket Monster

Terry Coombs wrote:
ChairMan wrote:
It's that time of year again : )


Instead of a machine-gun peppering, he got nuked. He and
the horse he
rode in on.......and his cannon too. One side was
untouched, but the
other side was arc-welded. Real warfare. Doug examined it
real
quiet-like and then started laughing again.

I assume he will remember the finer points of the lesson
as he grows
older. When I now speak of 'almost being burned beyond
recognition'
he will have a slightly better understanding of what I
mean. I hope
that this vivid image tempers the knowledge he now has
regarding
rocket construction. O well. After all, if your dad isn't
gonna
teach you how to get your ass blown off, who will?

ROTFLMAO !!!

Yup, makes me laugh every year I read it. PRICELESS

Uncle Monster wrote:
On Monday, July 4, 2016 at 2:38:30 PM UTC-5,
ChairMan
wrote:
It's that time of year again : )

WARNING: IF YOU ARE HUMOR IMPAIRED *DO NOT* READ ANY
FURTHER



Happy 4th

IT'S A MAN THING

About 2 weeks ago, I was looking around the Web for the
BIGGEST sky
rocket that I could get shipped to me via common freight
carrier. I
located a fireworks importer in Wisconsin who had this
mondo sky
rocket--biggest thing I had ever seen--called a
SkyDragon. These
things are 48 inches tall and are mounted on a 1/2-inch
wooden
dowel. Pure aerospace engineering.

I plopped down a bunch of money and had him send me two
cases of
these things. They arrived at the freight dock a few days
ago and I
had to drive the van over to pick them up. Two boxes each
2 feet by
2 feet by 4 feet in size containing 80 rockets each. The
'Class 4
Explosives'
sticker on the side of each box was a real bonus. I am
gonna have to
save them for the scrapbook.

That night, me and the kiddos had a gen-u-ine rocket
launch
ceremony. I placed one of these beauties in a liter-size
glass
bottle and the bottle fell over. Hmmmm- this thing was
waaay too
big. I looked around the shop for a pipe to set it in,
but realized
that the only dirt I could drive the pipe into was in
plain sight of
my neighbor's house. I knew he was a cool guy, but I
didn't want him
to call the cops. You see- 'projectile-type' fireworks
are totally
illegal in this county. I was surprised that the Buncombe
County
Sheriff Department wasn't waiting for me at the loading
dock when I
picked these things up. Anyhow, I finally rigged a launch
pad by
prying up one of the driveway drain grates with a crowbar
and
sitting the stick into the deep pit. Looked sorta like an
ICBM silo
with its hardened lid slid aside.

I asked which of my three kids wanted to light the fuse,
but all
took a few steps back and politely declined.
Chicken****s. Kids just
aren't
made the same nowadays. They fulfill their danger
quotient by
shooting bad guys in video games. About as far from real
danger as
you can get, if you ask me.

I told the little weenies to stand back as I bent to
light the device
with a Bic lighter.

The lady at the fireworks importer promised me that these
things
would NOT make any noise. I told her that they HAD to be
relatively
quiet so I could shoot them off in my neighborhood
without causing
'undue alarm'. She said I wouldn't have any problem. I
emphasized
the particular legal problems I would have if there were
any type of
loud report at apogee. I emphasized the fact that I lived
right next
to a National Park and that any type of firework that was
discharged
or assumed to be discharged on that property would get me
sent
before a FEDERAL judge right before I got sent to the
COUNTY judge.
She again assured me I would have no problem.

That lying bitch.

That rocket engine had a burn time about as long as any I
had EVER
seen, and the ascent echoed off the surrounding trees.
Diamond shock
pattern extended from the back end. It kept going and
going and
going. When it hit apogee at about 1000 feet, the rocket
disintegrated into a huge shower of silent red sparks.
Pretty cool,
I thought......until the shower of sparks burned out and
suddenly
transformed into a cloud of extremely bright and loud
explosions.
The kids scrambled into the back door 'Three Stooges'
style (ie:
where all three try to get through the same closed door
at once) and
left me standing in the smoking haze waiting for the cops
to arrive.
The dogs that live along our street were all barking
their heads off
at the apparition they had just witnessed in the night
sky

That ended the fireworks test for the night.

The next day, my oldest son Doug and I decided we were
gonna
'neuter' one of the rockets so it wouldn't make any
noise. I took
him into the closet where I store the gardening tools and
he saw
these two huge cases of fireworks standing there. The kid
went nuts.
He wanted to open BOTH
boxes so he could see what all 159 rockets looked like
lined up next
to each other. This kid has promise. I told him: "Since
mom only
thinks I have a few of these things lying around, maybe
that wasn't
such a good idea." He mulled that over for a few seconds,
then gave
me a real big smile in agreement.

We pulled one of the rockets out of the box and re-locked
the closet
door.

He and I both sat down on the driveway and proceeded to
take it
apart. It was a standard issue big-ass Chinese sky
rocket. I bet
they used these to kill people 500 years ago. As I sat
there taking
layer after layer of paper off, his brain was filling
with the
details of construction. Tissue, cardboard, plastic,
fuses...etc.
Realizing that he was mentally storing the design for
some future
project sorta made me shudder. All I was thinking was the
fact that
this thing was probably put together by a political
prisoner in a
hellhole somewhere who is probably gonna get 'executed'
so they can
sell his internal organs on the transplant market.

Probably not too far from the facts, but I managed to do
a bit of
explaining to him from the standpoint of aerospace
engineering
regarding how the thing worked. Doug is probably the only
4th grader
in the U.S. who can now describe the principle of thrust
using a
control volume model.

The rocket was pretty simple. It had a very large booster
engine
topped with a warhead that contained the red sparkly
things that
exploded. Removing the warhead was as simple as giving a
quick
twist, and I assumed the neutered rocket would fly higher
without
the payload. I was correct. Doug and I did a daylight
'stealth' test
and were able to add about 50% to the altitude attained
the previous
night. We decided to modify four more rockets and put
them aside in
the closet for easy access. When this was done, Doug had
a jar full
of stuff that came out of the warheads including: 12
fuses about
3-inches long each, some paper, 4 plastic nosecones and a
big
handfull of these little black balls about the size of
12-gauge
buckshot that turned out to be the 'red sparkly popper
things'. It
appeared that the outer layer was a simple gunpowder
coating
designed to quickly burn off as red shower of sparks. I
surmised
that the inner core had some kind of magnesium thermite
that gave
off an intense white light and a loud bang. Pretty cool
if you ask
me. Lots of energy packed into one teeny little ball.

I didn't want to see the popper thingies go to waste, so
I told Doug
we were gonna put them in a hole in the ground and set
them off. He
gave me another big smile.

It's amazing how kids think alike...even when separated
by 30 years.

As I was digging a shallow hole with my hand, Doug asked
if it would
be alright to put an army man next to these things so
that "When
they go off, it would look like he was getting shot with
a maching
gun". Dang....exactly what I was thinking. I agreed and
he ran off
to his room to dig something out of the mess. He returned
in about 3
seconds, out of breath and holding a cheap plastic
imitation of
Robert E. Lee on horseback and a Civil War cannon. I
pointed out
that they didn't have true machine guns in the Civil War,
but we
would overlook this for the purpose of the demonstration.
He handed
me the action figure and I placed it and the cannon next
to a rather
large pile of black beads from which a few of the fuses
extended.

I figured that three inches of fuse would take 2 seconds
to burn, so
I had at least that amount of time to stand up and take a
few steps
back. I neglected to recount the night before.....when
the warhead
ignited IMMEDIATELY upon reaching apogee. Tricky Chinese.
They had
installed extremely fast-burning fuse in these things and
that fact
totally escaped me.

I squatted next to Robert Lee and gave a short eulogy.
Doug laughed.
I took the trusty Bic lighter and placed it next to the
fuse. One
flick got the lighter going and THIS IMAGE IS ONE I WILL
REMEMBER
FOR A LONG TIME. My hand holding a lighter next to a pile
of
explosives.

There is usually a short but noticeable mental pause that
occurs
immediately before something bad or really stupid
happens. It is
where that little voice in your head says: "You dumbass."

The fuse burn time was in the 1/1000ths of a second
range. The pile
of little popper thingy's immediately ignited into a
tremendously
brilliant ball of fire. All I could think was
..."...th....th.....thermite..." Unfortunately, when they
are viewed
at ground level, these little popper thingies become
REALLY BIG
POPPER THINGIES and have a tendency to jump up to 15-feet
in every
direction from their point of ignition. I instantaneously
became
engulfed in a ball of fire that sounded a lot like being
in a
half-done bag of Orville Reddenbacher's popcorn.

It was all over about as fast as I could snap my fingers.

After the smoke cleared, Doug started laughing his butt
off. That
meant
I was still in one piece. Doug does not laugh at
dismembered limbs.
He said I jumped about 10-feet, an action that I do not
remember. I
checked my clothes for burn marks, and found none. He
checked my
back to make sure it was not on fire. No combustion
there. The
driveway was peppered with black holes where the concrete
had been
scarred from these things.

A close one. Another REAL close one. My mind ran the
tapes again to
re-hash what it had seen. All I remembered was being
inside something
akin to a 30-foot diameter........flaming dandelion.
Whew.

We examined Ol' Robert E. at ground-zero.

Instead of a machine-gun peppering, he got nuked. He and
the horse he
rode in on.......and his cannon too. One side was
untouched, but the
other side was arc-welded. Real warfare. Doug examined it
real
quiet-like and then started laughing again.

I assume he will remember the finer points of the lesson
as he grows
older. When I now speak of 'almost being burned beyond
recognition'
he will have a slightly better understanding of what I
mean. I hope
that this vivid image tempers the knowledge he now has
regarding
rocket construction. O well. After all, if your dad isn't
gonna
teach you how to get your ass blown off, who will?

TERRORIST! I'm gonna tell my mom. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle Rocket Monster

go ahead, I ain't skeered : )

On 07/04/2016 12:38 PM, ChairMan wrote:
It's that time of year again : )

WARNING: IF YOU ARE HUMOR IMPAIRED *DO NOT* READ ANY FURTHER



Happy 4th

IT'S A MAN THING

About 2 weeks ago, I was looking around the Web for the BIGGEST sky
rocket that I could get shipped to me via common freight carrier. I
located a fireworks importer in Wisconsin who had this mondo sky
rocket--biggest thing I had ever seen--called a SkyDragon. These things
are 48 inches tall and are mounted on a 1/2-inch wooden dowel. Pure
aerospace engineering.

I plopped down a bunch of money and had him send me two cases of these
things. They arrived at the freight dock a few days ago and I had to
drive the van over to pick them up. Two boxes each 2 feet by 2 feet by 4
feet in size containing 80 rockets each. The 'Class 4 Explosives'
sticker on the side of each box was a real bonus. I am gonna have to save
them for the scrapbook.

That night, me and the kiddos had a gen-u-ine rocket launch ceremony. I
placed one of these beauties in a liter-size glass bottle and the bottle
fell over. Hmmmm- this thing was waaay too big. I looked around the shop
for a pipe to set it in, but realized that the only dirt I could drive the
pipe into was in plain sight of my neighbor's house. I knew he was a cool
guy, but I didn't want him to call the cops. You see- 'projectile-type'
fireworks are totally illegal in this county. I was surprised that the
Buncombe County Sheriff Department wasn't waiting for me at the loading
dock when I picked these things up. Anyhow, I finally rigged a launch pad
by prying up one of the driveway drain grates with a crowbar and sitting
the stick into the deep pit. Looked sorta like an ICBM silo with its
hardened lid slid aside.

I asked which of my three kids wanted to light the fuse, but all took a
few steps back and politely declined. Chicken****s. Kids just aren't
made the same nowadays. They fulfill their danger quotient by shooting
bad guys in video games. About as far from real danger as you can get, if
you ask me.

I told the little weenies to stand back as I bent to light the device
with a Bic lighter.

The lady at the fireworks importer promised me that these things would
NOT make any noise. I told her that they HAD to be relatively quiet so I
could shoot them off in my neighborhood without causing 'undue alarm'. She
said I wouldn't have any problem. I emphasized the particular legal
problems I would have if there were any type of loud report at apogee. I
emphasized the fact that I lived right next to a National Park and that
any type of firework that was discharged or assumed to be discharged on
that property would get me sent before a FEDERAL judge right before I got
sent to the COUNTY judge. She again assured me I would have no problem.

That lying bitch.

That rocket engine had a burn time about as long as any I had EVER seen,
and the ascent echoed off the surrounding trees. Diamond shock pattern
extended from the back end. It kept going and going and going. When it
hit apogee at about 1000 feet, the rocket disintegrated into a huge
shower of silent red sparks. Pretty cool, I thought......until the shower
of sparks burned out and suddenly transformed into a cloud of extremely
bright and loud explosions. The kids scrambled into the back door 'Three
Stooges' style (ie: where all three try to get through the same closed
door at once) and left me standing in the smoking haze waiting for the
cops to arrive. The dogs that live along our street were all barking their
heads off at the apparition they had just witnessed in the night sky

That ended the fireworks test for the night.

The next day, my oldest son Doug and I decided we were gonna 'neuter' one
of the rockets so it wouldn't make any noise. I took him into the closet
where I store the gardening tools and he saw these two huge cases of
fireworks standing there. The kid went nuts. He wanted to open BOTH
boxes so he could see what all 159 rockets looked like lined up next to
each other. This kid has promise. I told him: "Since mom only thinks I
have a few of these things lying around, maybe that wasn't such a good
idea." He mulled that over for a few seconds, then gave me a real big
smile in agreement.

We pulled one of the rockets out of the box and re-locked the closet
door.

He and I both sat down on the driveway and proceeded to take it apart. It
was a standard issue big-ass Chinese sky rocket. I bet they used these to
kill people 500 years ago. As I sat there taking layer after layer of
paper off, his brain was filling with the details of construction. Tissue,
cardboard, plastic, fuses...etc. Realizing that he was mentally storing
the design for some future project sorta made me shudder. All I was
thinking was the fact that this thing was probably put together by a
political prisoner in a hellhole somewhere who is probably gonna get
'executed' so they can sell his internal organs on the transplant market.

Probably not too far from the facts, but I managed to do a bit of
explaining to him from the standpoint of aerospace engineering regarding
how the thing worked. Doug is probably the only 4th grader in the U.S.
who can now describe the principle of thrust using a control volume model.

The rocket was pretty simple. It had a very large booster engine topped
with a warhead that contained the red sparkly things that exploded.
Removing the warhead was as simple as giving a quick twist, and I assumed
the neutered rocket would fly higher without the payload. I was correct.
Doug and I did a daylight 'stealth' test and were able to add about 50% to
the altitude attained the previous night. We decided to modify four more
rockets and put them aside in the closet for easy access. When this was
done, Doug had a jar full of stuff that came out of the warheads
including: 12 fuses about 3-inches long each, some paper, 4 plastic
nosecones and a big handfull of these little black balls about the size of
12-gauge buckshot that turned out to be the 'red sparkly popper things'.
It appeared that the outer layer was a simple gunpowder coating designed
to quickly burn off as red shower of sparks. I surmised that the inner
core had some kind of magnesium thermite that gave off an intense white
light and a loud bang. Pretty cool if you ask me. Lots of energy packed
into one teeny little ball.

I didn't want to see the popper thingies go to waste, so I told Doug we
were gonna put them in a hole in the ground and set them off. He gave me
another big smile.

It's amazing how kids think alike...even when separated by 30 years.

As I was digging a shallow hole with my hand, Doug asked if it would be
alright to put an army man next to these things so that "When they go off,
it would look like he was getting shot with a maching gun".
Dang....exactly what I was thinking. I agreed and he ran off to his room
to dig something out of the mess. He returned in about 3 seconds, out of
breath and holding a cheap plastic imitation of Robert E. Lee on
horseback and a Civil War cannon. I pointed out that they didn't have
true machine guns in the Civil War, but we would overlook this for the
purpose of the demonstration. He handed me the action figure and I placed
it and the cannon next to a rather large pile of black beads from which a
few of the fuses extended.

I figured that three inches of fuse would take 2 seconds to burn, so I
had at least that amount of time to stand up and take a few steps back. I
neglected to recount the night before.....when the warhead ignited
IMMEDIATELY upon reaching apogee. Tricky Chinese. They had installed
extremely fast-burning fuse in these things and that fact totally escaped
me.

I squatted next to Robert Lee and gave a short eulogy. Doug laughed. I
took the trusty Bic lighter and placed it next to the fuse. One flick got
the lighter going and THIS IMAGE IS ONE I WILL REMEMBER FOR A LONG TIME.
My hand holding a lighter next to a pile of explosives.

There is usually a short but noticeable mental pause that occurs
immediately before something bad or really stupid happens. It is where
that little voice in your head says: "You dumbass."

The fuse burn time was in the 1/1000ths of a second range. The pile of
little popper thingy's immediately ignited into a tremendously brilliant
ball of fire. All I could think was ..."...th....th.....thermite..."
Unfortunately, when they are viewed at ground level, these little popper
thingies become REALLY BIG POPPER THINGIES and have a tendency to jump up
to 15-feet in every direction from their point of ignition. I
instantaneously became engulfed in a ball of fire that sounded a lot like
being in a half-done bag of Orville Reddenbacher's popcorn.

It was all over about as fast as I could snap my fingers.

After the smoke cleared, Doug started laughing his butt off. That meant
I was still in one piece. Doug does not laugh at dismembered limbs. He
said I jumped about 10-feet, an action that I do not remember. I checked
my clothes for burn marks, and found none. He checked my back to make
sure it was not on fire. No combustion there. The driveway was peppered
with black holes where the concrete had been scarred from these things.

A close one. Another REAL close one. My mind ran the tapes again to
re-hash what it had seen. All I remembered was being inside something
akin to a 30-foot diameter........flaming dandelion. Whew.

We examined Ol' Robert E. at ground-zero.

Instead of a machine-gun peppering, he got nuked. He and the horse he
rode in on.......and his cannon too. One side was untouched, but the
other side was arc-welded. Real warfare. Doug examined it real
quiet-like and then started laughing again.

I assume he will remember the finer points of the lesson as he grows
older. When I now speak of 'almost being burned beyond recognition' he
will have a slightly better understanding of what I mean. I hope that
this vivid image tempers the knowledge he now has regarding rocket
construction. O well. After all, if your dad isn't gonna teach you how to
get your ass blown off, who will?



We both are laughing are asses off!

On 07/04/2016 01:38 PM, ChairMan wrote:
[snip]


I assume he will remember the finer points of the lesson as he grows
older. When I now speak of 'almost being burned beyond recognition' he
will have a slightly better understanding of what I mean. I hope that
this vivid image tempers the knowledge he now has regarding rocket
construction. O well. After all, if your dad isn't gonna teach you how to
get your ass blown off, who will?



I call Bull****!
Post a youtube video link or it never happened.

D. Fault wrote:
On 07/04/2016 01:38 PM, ChairMan wrote:
[snip]


I assume he will remember the finer points of the lesson as he grows
older. When I now speak of 'almost being burned beyond recognition'
he will have a slightly better understanding of what I mean. I hope
that this vivid image tempers the knowledge he now has regarding
rocket construction. O well. After all, if your dad isn't gonna
teach you how to get your ass blown off, who will?



I call Bull****!
Post a youtube video link or it never happened.

You're an asshole .

--
Snag

On Tue, 5 Jul 2016 08:17:05 -0500, "Terry Coombs"
wrote:

D. Fault wrote:
On 07/04/2016 01:38 PM, ChairMan wrote:
[snip]


I assume he will remember the finer points of the lesson as he grows
older. When I now speak of 'almost being burned beyond recognition'
he will have a slightly better understanding of what I mean. I hope
that this vivid image tempers the knowledge he now has regarding
rocket construction. O well. After all, if your dad isn't gonna
teach you how to get your ass blown off, who will?



I call Bull****!
Post a youtube video link or it never happened.

You're an asshole .

Humor impaired, too.

D. Fault wrote:
On 07/04/2016 01:38 PM, ChairMan wrote:
[snip]


I assume he will remember the finer points of the lesson as he grows
older. When I now speak of 'almost being burned beyond recognition'
he will have a slightly better understanding of what I mean. I hope
that this vivid image tempers the knowledge he now has regarding
rocket construction. O well. After all, if your dad isn't gonna
teach you how to get your ass blown off, who will?



I call Bull****!
Post a youtube video link or it never happened.

You must be a democrat and did not follow the instructions at the beginning
of the post, did you?
Now go find a safe place until you feel better, mkay

replying to ChairMan, Patrushka wrote:
I really liked this web page until I read this one jerk who brought politics
into it. Some people ruin everything.

--
posted from
http://www.homeownershub.com/mainten...ng-895934-.htm

On Fri, 15 Jul 2016 15:44:02 +0000, Patrushka
wrote:

replying to ChairMan, Patrushka wrote:
I really liked this web page until I read this one jerk who brought politics
into it. Some people ruin everything.

So go away. Nobody cares about your web page.

Chairman will explain it to you in kinder words.

Oren wrote:
On Fri, 15 Jul 2016 15:44:02 +0000, Patrushka
wrote:

replying to ChairMan, Patrushka wrote:
I really liked this web page until I read this one jerk
who brought
politics into it. Some people ruin everything.

So go away. Nobody cares about your web page.

Chairman will explain it to you in kinder words.

I'm trying to kinder and gentler BEG

ChairMan posted for all of us...



Oren wrote:
On Fri, 15 Jul 2016 15:44:02 +0000, Patrushka
wrote:

replying to ChairMan, Patrushka wrote:
I really liked this web page until I read this one jerk
who brought
politics into it. Some people ruin everything.

So go away. Nobody cares about your web page.

Chairman will explain it to you in kinder words.

I'm trying to kinder and gentler BEG

I tried that now no one pays attention anymore...

--
Tekkie