Flares, smoke and use by dates

[sinkingpete]

I have a selection of flares and smoke that have now reached there use by date. The current disposal route seams to be to get in touch with the nominated coastguard base and arrange to drop them off. Does anyone know of any better uses for them? In the past I have had permission to set them off at demo days etc but these days that does not seam to be an approved of disposal route.

So if anyone has an approved of demo day etc and wants some end of life flares etc (in Inverness) let me know otherwise its off to the coastguard.

On the reliability front for old flares, years ago I worked at a yacht chandlers and it was common practice to collect up the previous years haul of flares etc and arrange with the CG to set them all off of an evening. The Pains wessex ones seamed the most reliable and rarely failed to go off and hand held ones were definitely more reliable than rockets. Some of the cheap rockets were very dodgy even when they were in date, with parachutes that failed to open going in odd directions etc. The other issue that showed up was obvious, if they were kept dry they worked more reliably than when they had been soaked or kept in the damp.
The other issue was that the smoke stains you clothes orange but they rarely failed to go off even when 10 years old

Any thoughts, views, offers, etc?

Pete

[Nick P]

I have not personally checked the validity of the following statement, but I was told (on an RNLI Sea Safety course) that the useable life of flares in the UK is limited to 3 years. The identical product, marketed elsewhere in the EU can have a useable life of up to 5 years. The governing factor being the respective countries legislation.
Can anyone confirm or deny?

Other than that, it is, as you say, get in touch with HMCG and arrange to deliver on the appointed day.

Nick

[tenboats1]

I dispose of mine on the 5th Nov. I don't care about the rules on this, but I'm sensible: they get launched at the same time as the village fireworks display and I'm well in land.

I give them 2 years over date as they never get wet. No failures to date, maybe give them 3 years next time.

Apart from anything else it is useful to get the experience in firing them, esp the rockets.

TB

[Ken_T]

Hi Tenboats,
Be careful setting off rockets over land as they often land still burning (phosphorous burns very hot).
Ken

[Yakdiver]

I was told to buy new ones, but keep your old ones and let them off first, if they fail you have the new one as a backup.

[TechnoEngineer]

(imagines YakDiver carrying an arsenal of flares on his SOT...)

[maryinoxford]

I'm land-locked at the moment, but hoping to do some sea paddling when I retire. I really don't want to carry pyrotechnics, exactly because of all this hassle. (What do you do with any that get damaged, rather than just out of date?) I'll look into whatever laser signallers are available at the time. And couldn't somebody design a smoke cannister that works from compressed gas rather than explosives?

Mary

[Jim]

The biggest hazard when letting off yor own out of date flares, is what happens if one fails to go off (much more likely than one going off in a dangerous way)?
At this point you generally have an unfired pyrotechnic without a firing mechanism, but which has been disturbed in an attempt to fire it.

It's your choice, until you do actually try to hand them in at which point you make it the coastguards choice, and they will almost certainly have to get the professionals on site to sort it out rather than transport it again.

Flares cannot be sent in the post, my boss used to work in a chandlery and once received a returned flare through the post with a note explaining that it hadn't gone off when they tried to fire it so they wanted a refund.....

2 friends have a great story, one recounted the time he set a parachute flare off on bonfire night from his house over the moors, the other recounted a tale of searching those same moors with the MRT one bonfire night - they hadn't met at the time it happened, but one was more put out than the other when they discovered 20 years later that they had the same story!

There are plenty of idiots about, I see no need to join their ranks by messing about with big fireworks that haven't gone off. The current issue with both supply and collection is that the chandlers or drop off centres need to be licensed and have adequate facilities (to get the license). Mary will find that not only does she not want to have pyrotechnics, but that it is getting harder and harder for those unable to drive long distances to buy them or dispose of them in the legally approved manner as chandlers are failing to have their licenses renewed, and very few are getting approved as collection centres. Coastguard station closures are yet another impediment.

Someone must be doing disposal on a large scale for shipping....????

[journeyman]

Someone must be doing disposal on a large scale for shipping....????

Woops . . . I seem to have dropped my TEPs overboard . . .

[EdSmith]

Someone must be doing disposal on a large scale for shipping....????

Hazardous waste disposal firms, a friend recently dealt with a container load, no idea what happened to them. Doubt they would deal with small numbers from the public, certainly not misfires.

I came across a para-rocket in a western isles bothy two years ago, it expired in the mid 1980's!

[sinkingpete]

It used to be fairly common practice to modify the rockets by removing the parachute and firing them horizontally, Not to be recommended. I have a feeling that was why you needed an explosives licence to buy them in NI for a while.

[parafinn]

It used to be fairly common practice to modify the rockets by removing the parachute and firing them horizontally, Not to be recommended. I have a feeling that was why you needed an explosives licence to buy them in NI for a while.

Hi, I wish I had known about that, last bonfire night. We had a few kayak club members round to the house. Before you knew it, we has a nice wee display going on in the back garden.

Orange smoke flares - boring in the dark.
Red pin point flares - the intense glare was enough to temporarily blind you.
Parachute rocket flares - a grande finale- good for 300m vertical & 40 seconds burn time. It somehow took off from the ground at only 15 degrees blasting through the village street at an unbelievable pace. Quite where it ended up is anybody's guess???????

Honest mister it wisnae me - it wus a big boy who done and ran away.

[Voodoo]

It used to be fairly common practice to modify the rockets by removing the parachute and firing them horizontally, Not to be recommended. I have a feeling that was why you needed an explosives licence to buy them in NI for a while.

haha its only in recent years they have allowed Fireworks in NI, I grew up never having fireworks when I came over to England when I was 21 the first year I think I spend nearly £500 of fireworks since I had a whole missed childhood to make up for,

many moons ago I had been doing rescue training and we had a demo with flares the Boss fires a para flare, it goes off, and up and floats nicely back toward the water and right into a sail boat moored off shore ohh such fun we had scrambling boats to get the fire out sort of put an end to the training session

[Owen]

Hi Tenboats,
Be careful setting off rockets over land as they often land still burning (phosphorous burns very hot).
Ken

Parachute, hand held, smoke and mini flares do not contain phosphorous, but do get very hot.

How the Army deal with them. Get a big steel ammo box, bash some air holes in it, fill with old pyrotechics, pore petrol over the whole lot, set it off electronicly. Or at least that's how we used to do it. Don't try this at home children.

[Mark R]

Hi Tenboats,
Be careful setting off rockets over land as they often land still burning (phosphorous burns very hot).
Ken

Yes, I nearly burned someone's shed down in Keswick, one New Year...

[nickcrowhurst]

If you tie a banger to the firework rocket's stick, with the fuse papers facing each other the correct distance apart, the banger fuse will ignite while the rocket is in mid-flight. With a bit of practice, you can make it so that the banger explodes just as the rocket lands. When I was a horrid youth I lived on one side of a valley with a railway line in its base in a grotty south London suburb. I dug a tunnel and trench system in the back garden, and was able to mortar the terrified residents on the other side of the valley from deep cover at night. Very satisfying, and I am of course thoroughly ashamed now at the memory.... Oh yes, my dad was the local cop......
Nick.