Rules about tracers.

[Abbott Shaull]

Originally Posted by Panther Al

yeah: you should have heard the tower spas out when we opened up, fireball bigger than the tank, the tracers loaded up like they was left a trace that looked more like a laser beam than anything else. Tower was totally spastastic.

Oh, I bet. Good thing the Lt. knew someone with Stars on their shoulder. Otherwise, it probably would of been the end of his career for admitting that the crew were under his orders...lol

[dragoon500ly]

Had a chance to use grenades again in Germany, but the NCOIC was an ex-Special Forces type with four tours in Vietnam under his belt. The day of the training, he had all of the grenades lined up on tables and started pulling firing assemblies. He then ignited the fuses and it was shocking how bad the difference, everything from 1 second all the way up to eleven seconds.

He then pulled a few coils of fuse, cut 2-3 lengths and burned them and got the right length for 5 seconds and then had us cut and install the correct lengths.

Two lessons; how to extract and reset fuses in grenades, and never trust the morons in the ammo plant!

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

...everything from 1 second all the way up to eleven seconds.

Which is why it's never a good idea to cook off a grenade.

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

Which is why it's never a good idea to cook off a grenade.

Unless you have timed and cut your own fuze!

[Legbreaker]

Even then you're taking your life into your hands. Fuses only retain their timing for a relatively short period - you can't stick them on the shelf after fitting the new fuse and expect them to still be the same a few months later. Humidity, etc works it's magic and effects the burn time, potentially even preventing detonation in some cases.
Unless you're using the grenades immediately, or at least in the next couple of days, you're better off treating them very cautiously in my opinion, and not risk taking off your hand.

Factory fuses may vary in delay, but at least they're almost guaranteed to work.

[Targan]

Most of my experience with explosives has been as a civilian shotfirer (powder monkey) but I have been reading this thread with great interest. I agree that the burn time and reliability of most if not all chemical fuzes will change over time.

The biggest individual charge I ever set off was just under 30kg (mostly ANFO with a few kilograms of Powergel primer charges) and that produced a pretty darn impressive explosion. I've set off more than that in one go as part of a team but not all in one explosion (coordinated timed charges with quarter and half second delays between each blast). And det cord is great fun.

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

Even then you're taking your life into your hands. Fuses only retain their timing for a relatively short period - you can't stick them on the shelf after fitting the new fuse and expect them to still be the same a few months later. Humidity, etc works it's magic and effects the burn time, potentially even preventing detonation in some cases.
Unless you're using the grenades immediately, or at least in the next couple of days, you're better off treating them very cautiously in my opinion, and not risk taking off your hand.

Factory fuses may vary in delay, but at least they're almost guaranteed to work.

The replacement fuze was regular grenade fuze in its original shipping coil. The only thing completed different were measured sections were cut off and burned...at least we know that this particular lot of fuze would burn for 5 seconds!

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by Targan

Most of my experience with explosives has been as a civilian shotfirer (powder monkey) but I have been reading this thread with great interest. I agree that the burn time and reliability of most if not all chemical fuzes will change over time.

The biggest individual charge I ever set off was just under 30kg (mostly ANFO with a few kilograms of Powergel primer charges) and that produced a pretty darn impressive explosion. I've set off more than that in one go as part of a team but not all in one explosion (coordinated timed charges with quarter and half second delays between each blast). And det cord is great fun.

My instructor on the demo course loved det cord!!! He gave a demonstration once in which he took an entire 152m roll of det cord...the selected ambush site was treated to a series of loops and swirls (all carefully camouflaged) and salted with sticks of C-4; then a few key trees were treated to five wraps of cord and camo'd again....it truely was an impressive bang!