Fireworks

[tombogan03884]

Spent the last hour standing down at the intersection.
Good sight lines in 5 directions , crappy sight lines in 3 directions and friggin fireworks in all of them.   
They originally canceled all 4th activities , but the guys from Recycled Percussion , as usual, step up and bought a bunch of fireworks in Lakeport, then the city said ok, we'll shoot off fireworks, but no one can go to the park, then Rotary said screw that, use OUR park . I didn't go down there, but they were one of the displays I watched .
I think the PD disposed of all the confiscated ones. Some one over there put on a good show .
I know where a big chunk of that stimulus went !   
I could look around fast enough to see them all.
Hell, Linda Blair couldn't turn her head fast enough.   
I hope this is America's answer to President Trumps speech.

[Big Frank]

I know this is late but I'm trying to catch up on everything I missed since summer started. There were fireworks going off almost daily in my neighborhood from Memorial Day weekend until sometime in August. I heard some go off on 9/11 when I was working in the yard. I went up north 2 weeks plus a few days, I think 17 or 18 days altogether, to ride my ATV for a 4th of July vacation. I heard a bunch of booms a lot of different nights and didn't see many fireworks because of all the trees around us. If something blew up in a big ball I might see the top 20%. Then another would go off on the other side of me and I could hear crackles and see some of it. I did hear the burp of A-10s firing in the distance, I don't know how many days. That happens almost every time I go to my friends' cabin. Sometimes I see them fly right over us. I think they're always in pairs but most of the time I only see one of them. They don't exactly announce their arrival, they just show up a second or 2 after you hear them and you have to look between the right trees. We're 30 some miles from Camp Grayling. It's the biggest National Guard training facility in the US, so of course it's the main training facility for the Michigan National Guard. Sometimes there are convoys of military vehicles on I-75 around that area, a bunch of weekend warriors working their 2 days a month.

The guy whose cabin is next to my buddy's used to be the head of a crew that worked on and loaded A-10s among other aircraft, and he thought there's no way you hear the guns on A-10s from that far away. Then one day he hear rrrrrrrrrrp and realized yeah you can. I'm not sure exactly where the range is but they must drop some bag-@$$ bombs once in awhile. Sometimes we hear a big rumbling boom and someone says, is that thunder? We look at the sky and check the radio, and now that have a cell phone I check that if I can get any reception. We usually have it figured out if we hear another kaboom. Those are way, way louder than the cannon which you might not hear if you're listening to the radio.

I was forbidden to bring any more fireworks that shoot up in the air after my friend's brother-in-law and I drove down to Toledo one year and spent $1,000 on some really good stuff. It was all buy one get one free, plus if you buy $150 worth you get a free rocket assortment. And if you spend $400 or $1,000, you get a box full of aerial repeaters, or a big 500 gram repeater to go with it. 500 grams is the most powder they're legally allowed to put in a Class C firework. It doesn't matter if it's 9 shots or 120, it's going to be a good show by itself. Most of the things we had looked like the grand finale for most people. Too bad the fire danger is high or extremely high almost every 4th of July. The neighbors all around there were not happy at all with us but some came and watched. You could say I like fireworks, I REALLY like them, but there weren't any shows scheduled around the campfire this year. From what I heard it sounds like I missed a good show while I was gone, but it's always like WWIII here on the 4th. When the choice is sit here and watch the show or get out of town, I'm gone like the wind, and who can blame me?

[BAC]

Fireworks Display by Yeet Cannon, on Flickr

[Big Frank]

Geez! The top half of that picture would make a good wallpaper.

Back when the only fireworks I could legally buy in Michigan were sparklers and smoke bombs, I had the good ones shipped to me a few times instead of driving to Ohio. One time when I opened up a box-full and took everything out there was more loose powder in the box than usual. I couldn't say exactly what kind it was or which fireworks it came from. I put it in a little pile and lit it and that's when I found out it was mostly flash powder, not just fine gunpowder. My thumb turned darker and oranger than The Donald's face, and no matter how much cold water I ran on it, it just kept on burning. I ended up with a bad 2nd-degree burn and IIRC I lost a couple of layers of skin around my thumbnail and up toward the first joint. I remember that part of my thumb being white and wrinkly like dishpan hands covered with ointment. The orange-brown color was burned into my skin above that and I had to wait for it to grow out. IIRC the underside of my thumb was much less toasted but the tip hurt real bad. I normally use a self-lighting propane torch for lighting fireworks and have bought cheap cigars and used them too, but I lit that stuff with a butane lighter.

The fireworks didn't get beat up in shipping when I went and got them myself. At the store they didn't care how much I bought or where I was going with them. I just had to sign a statement saying I'd have them out of the state within 72 hours. I don't think they were all legal to use in Ohio either. The Phantom Fireworks of Toledo, AKA West Toledo store in Holland, OH is 207 miles round-trip from my house. Phantom Fireworks of Flint is a fraction over 3 miles round-trip. It's a quick trip that I can make as many times as I want to any time of the year, instead of buying a huge load of fireworks and trying to save a couple for New Year's Day or someone's birthday or whatever. But now I don't stop for Chili Mac and a Hot Dog with Chili and Cheese at Rudy's Hot Dog in Toledo, "A Family Tradition Since 1920". It was my tradition for several years to stop there before I got back on US 23 to come home. I even took my dog once but left him in the truck. I brought him a doggie bag and poured him some water to go with his half of a chili cheese dog.

https://fireworks.com/

[tombogan03884]

Fire works are legal in NH, not in Mass.
Seabrook, a border town, has fireworks stores .
Years ago Mass State police were staking them out and arresting Mass customers when they crossed the line.
Seabrook Police arrested their spotters, charged them with a bunch of jurisdictional violations and a couple criminal charges.
Mass SP doesn't do that shit any more.   

[Sponsor]

[Rastus]

Tom,
I really like that story.  It warms my heart.

[Big Frank]

Fire works are legal in NH, not in Mass.
Seabrook, a border town, has fireworks stores .
Years ago Mass State police were staking them out and arresting Mass customers when they crossed the line.
Seabrook Police arrested their spotters, charged them with a bunch of jurisdictional violations and a couple criminal charges.
Mass SP doesn't do that shit any more.   

Lololol. Another option for fireworks in states where the good ones are all illegal is Indian reservations if there are any around.

[Rastus]

Do it yourself:  https://fireworkscookbook.com/

[Big Frank]

Do it yourself:  https://fireworkscookbook.com/

I've thought about doing that in the past but never tried it. Thanks to that page I now know that thermite produced using black iron oxide is less powerful than thermite that uses red iron oxide. Note to self: use the right kind of rust. You can also mix thermite with a couple other ingredients from that site to make thermate which burns even hotter. Need to burn through hardened armor? No problem with thermate. I saw someplace before that had all the chemicals and cardboard tubes etc. you would need to make just about any kind of fireworks. I don't think they had wings to make buzz bombs or helicopters but they had tubes for M-80s, rockets, mortars and such. And I remember that one place was selling the halves of balls you fill and tape and/or glue together to go in the mortars. I can only look at sites like that for a moment before I start thinking too seriously about buying a bunch of stuff.

On a related note: One time I let a neighbor borrow my Improvised Munitions Handbook. I don't know what he tried making but when I got it back the cover was stained and part of it was gone, burned away by strong acid by the looks of it. Kids. You can't trust them with anything. He's a grown man now and more dangerous than ever.