Some (attempt at?) humour for the hollidays

[Dimiter Popoff <tgi@cit.bg>]

Hi all,



Here is some humour - along with my best wishes to all of you for

the hollidays and during the next year.

 Many people on the list do have a technical background and these 

stories are well... sort of pre-technical.



 They got triggered by a message which Maury posted a while ago

mentioning his work on some types of missiles. This brought to

mind my missile experience (covered by the second story),

which reminded me my earlier cannon experience, covered by

the first story.



Dimiter 





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The Kitchen Cannonade



When I was 10-12 years old, I used to make "cannons" out of

empty brass roller-ball pen cartriges with several matches

peeled for a charge. A heating flame was the trigger,

it gave me enough time to hide far enough.

 One day a neighbour boy gave me  7-8 5mm bullets which I opened,

took the powder and must have used it for some more cannon shooting.

 Weeks later, I discovered that the empty shells I still posessed

had some ignition explosive on their bottoms. I must have had enough

sense to not try to scratch it out of there for my cannons,

but I was not the one to leave this resource idle, either. They were

shiny brass cylinders, perhaps 12 mm (1/2") long and 5 mm (1/5" ) diameter,

hollow and fortunately quite light.

 I put them on the kitchen stove and turned the respective plate on.

I put them opening up, so the reactive force would just press the

shell to the plate.

 My grandmother was washing dishes in the opposite corner of the kitchen,

and was naive enough not to turn and look at what I was doing.

 I slipped out of the kitchen into the next room where through a

tiny window I could watch. Now I only had to wait for the plate to get hot.

Clearly several bangs could do no harm; my gunning experience

told me the shells would stay in place.

 What my gunning experience did not tell me was that when the first

shell got off and stood in place indeed, the bang would be just strong enough

to tip all the rest to one side and leave them on the plate...

 That's when the true cannonade began. The kitchen was pretty tiny

and the sound deafening. The shells (fortunately light enough and

more or less harmless) flew around and produced an astonishing

number of rikoshets. 

I watched the scene with a hanging jaw; my grandmother had

knelt in the corner and had covered her head with both hands ...





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Ballistic Missile



In my early 20-es I had discovered the paper rocket-models, those which use

a pressed powder engine which burns for 1-2 seconds and after a delay

of 3-4 seconds blows a parachute-eject charge. They fly 300-400 m high

and are usually taken away by the wind after they open the parachute.

 One day I was coming back from a series of launches with a rocket still

intact, but without a parachute. I visited a friend of mine who was 

learning for some coming exams and was strongly supervised by his mother. 

 I said it would be a good idea to launch the rocket out of his window at

perhaps 45 degree; he objected, thinking of his mother in the next room.

I explained that I would place the accelleration rod outside the window so

no harm could be done. Also, I said this would be a ballistic missile

which we would aim at what was then the Bulgarian equivalent of the KGB

(perhaps two blocks away), a patriotic thing to do.

 He tried to object again but I ignored him and got to work. He said

his mother would be furious with me for distracting him from his books. 

I had already adjusted the launch angle and put a fire-conducting wire 

in the rocket engine. Seconds later, I lit the wire.

 The rocket disappeared with a loud hissing which, being echoed by

the surrounding buildings, sounded like an alien attack.

Worse, nearly all the smoke my departing missile had produced 

got injected into the room which now smelled like a battlefield... 

It took me a while until I could see through the clouds my friends

mother who was at the door staring at me.





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Dimiter Popoff

Transgalactic Instruments, Gourko Str. 25 b, 1000 Sofia, Bulgaria

http://transgalactic.freeyellow.com

Phone: ++359/2/9923340



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