How high are fireworks?

"Blueskies" wrote in
:


"Reid & Julie Baldwin" wrote in message
...
As I watched some amateur fireworks displays this weekend, I thought
about what they would look like from the air. Before I fly in the
vicinity of a fireworks display, however, it would be nice to know
how high those flaming projectiles go.


The amateur stuff pops at 100' or so. They had a really big maybe 16"
shell that they sent up in Boston; launched to 1200' then burst. Most
pop by 500' or so...



I watched last year's fireworks atop the Stratosphere Tower in Las
Vegas. The indoor observation deck is 860' AGL and the fireworks were
launched from the top of the parking garage, perhaps 60' AGL. Most of the
rockets exploded pretty much at eye level. The ones exploding above were
more spectacular than the ones which detonated below.

For those not familiar with the tower, the glass on the indoor
observation deck slants outwards as it rises, so you can look straight
down. It does muffle a lot of the sound.

The outdoor observation deck was closed during the show for safety.
Several cardboard shards from the exploding rockets bounced off the windows
in front of me.

--
Marty Shapiro
Silicon Rallye Inc.

(remove SPAMNOT to email me)

"AS" == Andrew Sarangan writes:

AS Couple of hundred feet high is my guess. I have seen fireworks
AS from the air, and they are a dull event. They look like
AS sparkles on the ground. Don't waste your time.

They're worth seeing at least once, especially the bigger events. A
few weeks ago there was occasion to shoot some spectacular fireworks
at the SF side of the Bay Bridge, and I happened to be flying over the
Bay and down the coast while they were going off...now that was great.

"Andrew Sarangan" wrote in message
. ..
Couple of hundred feet high is my guess. I have seen fireworks from the
air, and they are a dull event. They look like sparkles on the ground.
Don't waste your time. Fireworks are best viewed from the ground.


I mostly agree. Last night I flew from Abilene to Temple from about 9:15-10:15. The impressiveness of the
individual shows was not great (especially from 7000 feet!). But it was pretty neat to see across the entire
landscape the little technicolor bubbles sort of spewing out of the ground. There was probably no instant when
there wasn't one erupting somewhere in view. You could tell the municipal-scale versus the individual-scale by
the size and frequency.

Of course they were ALL dwarfed to nothingness by the show being put on to the southwest of my route, by a
mature thunderstorm area about a hundred miles across. Seeing a lightning show like that from the air is
indeed awesome, because you get the scale and the 3-D-ness of it. And seeing it in the background of the
little "blips" of the fireworks shows really gives a sense of perspective between "forces of man" and "forces
of nature".

--
Cheers,
John Clonts
Temple, Texas
N7NZ

That sounds about right. As a rough rule of thumb, mortar-fired
firework shells go up about 100 feet per inch of diameter. Many
small-to-medium municipal shows don't shoot anything above 6" in
diameter, because larger mortars have to be buried for most of their
lenght, while 6" tubes (or smaller) can be set above ground.

Larger shows will include 8-12" shells, and even larger shells are
available (though they don't see a lot of use).

"Gary" wrote in message
oups.com...
That sounds about right. As a rough rule of thumb, mortar-fired
firework shells go up about 100 feet per inch of diameter.

At our recent fireworks, (pretty good sized display) It seemed to me, that
the shells took about 6 seconds, from launch to explosion. If they were
nearly stopped, and about to come back down, it would work out (using math)
to 576 feet.
--
Jim in NC

"Gary" wrote in message
oups.com...
That sounds about right. As a rough rule of thumb, mortar-fired
firework shells go up about 100 feet per inch of diameter. Many
small-to-medium municipal shows don't shoot anything above 6" in
diameter, because larger mortars have to be buried for most of their
lenght, while 6" tubes (or smaller) can be set above ground.

Larger shows will include 8-12" shells, and even larger shells are
available (though they don't see a lot of use).


I helped a guy build some quite large ones few years back, the coolest ones
were the 5lbs of calf's milk and 1lb of flash powder in the center. Man that
powdered milk can burn for a long time. he did the show in Wildrose, ND
"rostins thunder & lightning show" something like that.