firing 1.3 thru plastic

[Pyro Paul]

Ok, so I worked a shoot at a local dirt track last night with some fellow pyro friends and we knew there was incoming weather. On the infield we set up candles (rockets red glare),a chain of salutes (bombs bursting in air), 4" RWB mines and fireballs with ground salutes (exclamation point). On the outside of the track behind a concrete wall opposite the grandstands we were supposed to set up for an 8 min display during a certain portion of the memorial race agenda. We knew there was an incoming front with lots of wind and rain, possibly hail so they held off on the display set up and had the infield set up ready for the National anthem. As the front approached the guy in charge elected to use shrink wrap on the Anthem setup. Everyone involved did not want to use the plastic rolls and shoot thru the plastic stating that they didn't want salutes going off all over the ground. I've heard Dave state that for weather you can cover with plastic and shoot thru it. Is there a rule of thumb here when you can or when you can't? These guys have been doing this for awhile (the senior guy was on his 4th type 54 renewal last year and does several shoots a year) and were pretty set against shooting thru anything but shrink wrap. I'm confused... :confused:

To finish the scenario, the infield was shot off to the Anthem and we never set up the 8 min display and had to pick up in the rain an hour later when they cancelled the race after the hot laps portion and it took 2 hours to get out of the speedway due to ppl getting stuck in the mud and had to be pulled out with big loaders. LOL what a mess... :p

[PGH_Pyro]

big shells like that will go through plastic like hot knife through butter

[carrant]

At a local club event during the safety meeting demonstration the safety officer shot a 3" shell through a piece of 1/2" plywood. The shell didn't even notice the plywood was there - punched a perfect circle through it and still went up.

So plastic, foil, tarps, all offer about the same resistance as air to the larger shells. :)

[PyroJoeNEPA]

As a rule, anything 1.3 probably has more than enough "oomph" to go thru a thin piece of plastic sheeting...even the smaller bore 25mm cakes.
On the other hand, some of the small 1.4g stuff --like a Saturn Missile Battery--may --or may not--have enough juice to go thru a piece of plastic. I've seen some go & some do a weird tribal dance under the plastic sheet---I guess it has to do with the phase of the moon on the second Tuesday of the month.
Shrink wrap is a lot thinner than plastic sheeting and will be pretty much invisible to whatever is coming out of the tube. So, relax & don't worry about it...keep the product dry & it will fly for you.

[Pyro Paul]

So what you're saying is that they were being overly cautious? It just spooks me that guys that will use a poke on salute shells to put e match into the flash will not fire thru plastic. I'm not worried about it, I just thought maybe there was a reason why.

[displayfireworks1]

When I was working displays here in Pittsburgh where it always seems to rain. We had pyro-musicals on barges in the river. We would first cover all the mortars with aluminum foil, then cover them with plastic. as show time approached if it was raining we would just remove the plastic and shoot through the foil.
Will plastic stop a display shell? I'll answer that with this clip from one of my 2010 videos. This is from a PGI training class.
.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg5ha_Ye0ZY

[Pyro Paul]

Thank you for the input, I think maybe they were just trying to be extra safe. Nothing wrong with safety :)