3 replies to this topic

[rodney]

im sorry guys but im in the us. but one night on the fourth of july i was talking with a man down the street from me and we were shooting off shells when i seen a red ball that went really high into the sky and slowly can down. now i was familiar with the fireworks sold in the area. and the guy i was talking to was older then me by 30 years or so and he said it was a parachute. he was from the uk and i always remember that moment in time. ever since then i have tryed to get my hands on some of these parachutes and every time i think i got one its not the right one. its like trying to cauch a unicorn for me. my question is how high did one of the standard parachutes go up into the air. also some good news i just moved from idaho to texas and i love idaho i was 20 minutes away from a year round firework stand the size of a warehouse 15,000 sq. ft. and could get my hands on some really nice fireworks but the were illegal to shoot of in idaho. well on the 1 of jan. i went 10 minutes away from my house here in texas and went to a firework stand to find shells and rockets and the other stuff but what i was told while buying them changed my life. where i live its legal to shoot them off. so the 4 of july well be really fun. well i just want to know how high a standard shoot up into the sky because this might be the firework that is my unicorn sort of speak. Rodney

[pyrotrev]

If you're talking about the old (and very wonderful) StandardFireworks "Parachute floating Light"I guess they went up 30....40m, quite a long way for a consumer firework. What you saw might of course have been a marine parachute flare which would likely go maybe 8 times higher.

[Mortartube]

I also believe that what you saw was a marine distress parachute flare. They go up about 800 feet or more and have a quite bright magnesium based red star on a parachute.

[spectrum]

I suspect it is unlikely to be a Standard Fireworks "Parachute Floating Light", but more propably either a "Festoon" rocket ( I have seen Chinese and Spanish versions) or, as the previous poster stated, a distress signal.