Ry topped his last whooper of a fireball which was in 2007. This was the most awesome one yet. There was 7.5 gallons of gasoline, 12 pounds of Boomerite, 16 road flares, many feet of PVC pipe and one bullet involved. Click on the pictures below to get higher resolution versions.
Lyle@UltiMak and Ry ignited the flares. Then Lyle shot the explosives.
Ry speculated the PVC pipe would survive to be used again next year.
Ry took a bow to all the cheers and applause. 
Ry was wrong about the PVC pipe.
Update: Ry has comments and this video:
Update2: Nice picture and automated .GIF here (along with a general Boomershoot 2011 report from some of my staff that put in the most hours). And more video:
http://antitango.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/fireball_2011_big.gif
from
http://antitango.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/boomershoot-after-action-report/
Impressive. The bar gets higher every year, doesn’t it. ;-D
Ry was wrong about the PVC pipe?
If that is “wrong” I suspect “right” would be noticed two states over.
I’ve been working on recovery yesterday, I’ll post my pictures and video this morning. Janelle was far enough back that she should have gotten some decent video. My pictures from ground zero actually came out very well. I’m just sad the pictures of it turning into the mushroom didn’t come out. My only question at this point is it repeatable.
B
I quickly posted some of my pictures. Unfortunately, I was hurrying around so much Sunday that I forgot to set my camera for a higher speed shutter (these are all 1/60 of a second so there is a lot of motion blur). I haven’t looked at any of my video yet; I should get it posted this week some time along with a few other photos.
Holy moley! Hope no one tries that in their backyard!
Nice fireball- You might try adding some coarse Titanium shavings to the boomerite instead of the road flares/PVC frame to guarantee ignition. You guys watch from fairy close, wouldn’t want anyone to get clocked by a piece of road flare! Contact me if you want more information.
We used Titanium for several years with mixed results. The flares were more reliable.
Here are my Boomershoot posts as well as all my pics here on Flickr. Thanks for putting this on, I had a pretty good time.
Add a couple light tarps draped over that frame and fill it with pure O2 and THAT would be interesting!
There’ve been some nice ones at past Boomershoots, but I think this was the nicest. Thanks to Ry for the hard work and for offering me the carbine to pop that thing. I always think I can feel microscopic bits hitting me in the face at unbelievable velocity when shooting boomers “entertainingly close” but this time it was more intense, and it’s the first time I recall shading my face from the heat. Wow. Thanks to Joe for the hard work hosting and organizing this event.
I just uploaded my fireball video with the view from down range. You can see Ry celebrating his success and taking a bow in the lower right corner.
Hi Joe-
We’ve had very good reliability with the Titanium- We use milled chips from aerospace alloy, much coarser (and cheaper!) than the pure Ti “sponge” sold by pyro suppliers. Look at the first picture, you can see the sparks at the bottom of the fireball. Another way to ensure ignition of a gas effect is to fire a pyrotechnic mine right behind the gas shot. We do that by putting the mine tube buried in the ground right behind the gas mortar, the mine’s electric match in series with the electric match on the gas mortar’s lift charge (black powder usually). For HE lift and initiation by rifle fire I would try running a piece of signal line size det cord starting from your charge going back a short distance, use that to initiate a further run of shock tube (Nonel or NoMatch) running far enough so the mine tube survives the lift charge shock wave and have that go to a shock to flame transducer in the mine’s black powder lift. Heck, now I’m going to have to try it and see!
http://s559.photobucket.com/albums/ss31/Bert2368/?action=view¤t=photo-55.jpg
http://s559.photobucket.com/albums/ss31/Bert2368/?action=view¤t=photo-56.jpg
Here you can see the stars above the gas fireball-
http://s559.photobucket.com/albums/ss31/Bert2368/?action=view¤t=photo-49.jpg
Woah.