Hi Guys. First post but I've been lurking for about a year now. I'm Cutnroll's neighbor and the second guy on the left in the SoCal50s lineup. We just got back from another desert outing of shooting, eating, and launching balls! Boy was it a blast! (pun intended)
We tried a couple of new tricks to add some excitement to our bowling balls. For night shots, Cutnroll drilled out a hole in the ball and inserted part of a road flare. We tried this a couple of times but only one lit. I think the part with the striker needs to rest on top of the blackpowder. We even tried sticking fuse inside the flare element but I think the striker is the key.
For good tracking during the day, especially with those heavy charges, I drilled and inserted Estes model rocket engines. The blackpowder charge has no problem igniting the engine as long as the nozzle is facing the bottom of the mortar. The smoke trail is awesome! The sound of the rocket covers the whisteling but still sounds great in itself and the little puff of smoke for the parachute ejection charge adds to the excitement. One thing was interesting though. We thought that the balls would spin alot and that we would see it with the smoke trail. Not so. With the rocket engines, the balls wouldn't spin at all. I think the added thrust actually stableized the ball in flight keep the engine nozzle pointed downward as the ball flew away from us. The larger the engine, the less it wobbled or spun.
Well, that's it for now! Let me say you guys have some neat stuff here. Thanks, Mark
