Fireworks as emergency signalling devices

Anyone here (besides me) consider this? I would think a cheap box of sparklers would be practical, conveniently sized, and cheap. Or how about a piccolo pete as a whistling signal, or a pack of firecrackers as a percussion signal, or a fountain cone, or a smoke ball?

Maybe I will have to reconsider what I will be putting in my PSK. There's some easy ways to make a lot of cheap fireworks more rugged and weatherproof.

Yeah, there's an associated risk of starting a fire when deploying some of these things. It should be managable if you know what you are doing.

Probably work. As I recall, sparklers take a lot of flame to get going, so that flame might work almost as well. Some of the fireworks that really spew sparks would probably get someones attention...

As an inducer for sparklers, we used to wrap the tip with a couple winds of cannon fuse. Worked like a champ.

One of them little boxes of saturn rockets (50 rounds that go off like whistling bottle rockets then end in a report) would be great for SAR once they got within a mile or so of ya.

It's a thought. It might not be worth the effort in some cases.

I suspect that durability would be an issue. A few years back our squad club ran a fireworks booth, and of course I had to take my turn working in it. We found all kinds of CA legal fireworks that were leaking powder while still in the factory boxes, and some that would start leaking as you removed them from the box to hand to a buyer. It would be a real bummer to carry something around in your pack for emergency signalling, get into a jam, dig your made in China gizmo out of your pack only to find that it has leaked itself to death...

You'd have to be careful that you didn't start another california wildfire.

OR--someone would just write off your SOS as a jerk playing with fireworks-- "ya we were up on the mountain yesterday and some meatball was shooting off bottle rockets"

benjammin.
During my desert days I would carry 2 full sized rockets in a 1 in. pipe attached to my jeep. Never had to use them for help but they made me feel good. once a year (4th of July) I would fire the old ones and put in new ones.

My thoughts exactly.

-Blast

Yeah, I can see where if you were lost and no one was actively looking for you it might be mistaken for goofing off. I was thinking more if you were definitely overdue and knew they'd be looking by now, it would be more effective then.

As for making them more durable, we found that judicious use of elmer's glue, spar varnish, and now gorilla glue will go a long ways to improving on longevity of these items. We were able to improve the shelf life on some of our fireworks by a factor of 10 or so.

Just looking for inexpensive alternatives. The best bang for my buck, you know.

Some modern ones have a tip that is designed to be easily lit. You can do it with a match or lighter.

They burn with magnesium brightness, but only for about 5 seconds which doesn't seem very useful to me. They are also quite crumbly if you bend them.

Hilarious Nighthiker!

The sparklers I usually get last about 30 seconds or so. Good for a couple waves and a quick toss into the air maybe.

Yep, we used to stuff coffee cans full of sparklers and leave one in the center as the fuse. That was a small cratering charge.

Y'all realize today is the Feast Day of St. Barbara, right? Patron saint of explosioneers...

-Blast, looking forward to tonight punch

'Tis that the mushroom cloud I see in the far distance south of DFW area? Thought Spring was too far away.

I've thought of bottle rockets, as well as the "smoke grenades." Unfortunately, bottle rockets are either too small to be too useful, or too big to carry many. And the commercial smoke grenades I've used tend to be, well, easily blown away.

Now, if I could get a few military-grade smoke grenades, I'd be a happy camper!

Off-topic, but I've often wondered how fireworks would work in scaring off wildlife (cougars, bears, etc). Figure a few M80s thrown at something would do the trick, but kind of don't want to find out the hard way if it doesn't!

Back when I was a kid, I know the guys who were of hunting age (including dad) used to occasionally "drive" deer with firecrackers. Of course, this was back when deer were fairly rare, there was no such thing as doe permits etc. Today, you trip over the things

"...if I could get a few military-grade smoke grenades, I'd be a happy camper!..."

This is pretty close. Not real inexpensive tho...

Time to make friends with someone on post. Colors good for marking. White good for choking yourself to death if not careful with wind direction.
Make sure the color isn't CS

One of my little brother's many jobs (he really needs to get a real gig) is as a fireworks display tech. He loves the no liscence needed guys- he buys those like most of us here buy good socks or ammunition or water bottles. I asked him about this very topic, and he down checked anything you can get without ATF approval for a few reasons:

-Not waterproof.
-Not very robust.
-Most don't go very high.
-Bulk.
-If they break, your bag is now a flare waiting to go off.

To demo, he set off a 100 shot salvo box when I was about 300 yards away in a clearing that is about 30 feet higher than the driveway. I could hear them going off, but there was no visual component that could be seen through the trees. He then lit off a couple of little (I think 2") mortars, and they barely got high enough to be seen over the trees. They kinda failed in my opinion.

You're lying there with a broken leg, shooting off firecrackers to attract attention. SAR hears them and they ask each other, "Is that SOB SHOOTING at us??? Let's go home!"

Fireworks are generally known as entertainment. Would any searchers think that they would be coming from a lost or injured person, or just some idiot who was trying to set what is left of California on fire?

But how would they be for setting zombies afire? How dry is a zombie? How flammable would his clothes be?

Sue

Firecrackers and bottle rockets, to name just two, are illegal in CA. So you touch a few off, and viola, a cop/park ranger/fishcop arrives to write you an expensive ticket...

Where I live if you set off an airborne anything they would bring in SWAT teams to bring you down, so you would be arrested but rescued.

Seriously, though, if done as you describe, benjammin, it could be enough of a nuisance factor to warrant someone calling it in.

Mdinana, I know they've used fireworks to scare birds from runways, right? So the surprise factor would probably work on bigger critters.

One of the survival signalling techniques taught by Hunter Safety/Education in Washington state is the three consecutive shot distress signal. The problem is twenty rounds of ammo can go pretty quick doing three shot volleys, plus the fact that you are putting lead in the air or at least discharging the firearm which presents additional risks. I gotta think a 100 pack of firecrackers would be less bulky and cheaper than 100 rounds of ammo, and accomplish about the same task. The SAR folks we talked to at the Mill Creek Watershed outside of Walla Walla still recognized the three shot distress signal as a legitimate method as of a few years ago.

I think generally anything in threes is recognized as some form of distress signal.

For threes.... Some fuze, some firecrackers, and wax. THAT might work-splice the little fuses into the big one, spaced for 2 second intervals, coated in wax. But I think I'd rather carry a metal cup under each of my nalgenes and a whistle- I can be noisy on my own. :P

Setting zombies alight is not recommended practice.
http://zombiedefense.blogspot.com/2007/06/zombies-and-fire.html

Okay, Brangdon, I'll forget setting the zombies on fire. Thanks.

Next question, brought up (inadvertently) by Benjammin: If someone with a firearm wants to use it to summon help by firing three shots, why do they fire it into the air (they always do in the movies)? What goes up will come down, eventually, somewhere. Personally, I wouldn't want to be beaned by a bullet coming back down at 30 ft per second, per second, or whatever the speed is.

Can't they just fire into a log or something?

Sue

30fps isn't much. Terminal velocity for something that size is probably higher than that, but not by a lot. So the risk isn't huge, but it IS there.

The only reason I might not fire into the ground is I don't know what is under the very top. Having the bullet bounce off a rock and come up through my foot or some other part of me just doesn't thrill me.

And firing into the air is an amazingly effective way of getting the attention of search aircraft. Not recommended, but it should work. *laughs*

The thirty feet per second per second that Susan refers to, is the acceleration due to gravity, not the terminal velocity.
One mph equal 1.66 feet per second; 30 fps is about 18mph.
I seem to remember that a human's "terminal" velocity is approx 120 mph. I don't know what kind of velocity to expect from a bullet in freefall, but I'd expect higher than that, given the density and drag. YMMV

I tried sparklers for fire starting. Rather hit and miss. Doubt a bottle rocket would work. But I've salvaged the powder out of a few firecrackers that had the fuses pull out while breaking up strings. Thought about mixing that with magnesium and aluminum filings in vaseline (to prevent oxidation of the metal) and using it for the devil's own PJ ball.

And a fire engine red MiG, which model?