Even as we speak, people are being monitored for unusual tennis ball and potato purchases.

As an alternative............
 

Not a cannon more an anti personnel mine...........

Take one large dutch cabbage

bore "crowy"holes top and bottom

cut flagettes in side of cabbage

place on bar

light white fuses ..........and leg it

serves approx 200 in less than a second:ok: or it did at the Burns Night at KSS '86

The other mine is the Flour Mine.

1 x placcy bag of flour (sliced bed bag 2 cup fulls of flour)

place mine behind any large group of wheels ( preferably US as their mess kit has correct contrast with flour!)

Stick crowy in top of bag

light fuse

retire sharpish........

After loud report wheels all stare at eachother from the front completely missing the photographic negative effect at the rear of their kit:ugh:

Oh happy days



Alwayz

The thunderflash in a large box of Rice Crispies was always impressive! :E

Gents, my previous note of caution about mess cannon info applies equally well to the sensitive information being displayed on this site about Vegetable IED's!

Concure with previous posts about the fuel/air mix changing with use.

Officer's Mess, Belize, circa 1982. Mess cannon made from SNEB rocket packaging tube. Performance was dropping off due to heating and/or pressure loss in barrel. Considered a rebuild, but rejected this option in favour of a bottle of oxygen from the medical centre to boost oxidant.

An effective short term fix. However, have been A2/G1/Z1 ever since due to high tone deafness:D!

Have fun. Don't crash!
Bus14

I have no wish to come across as a killjoy old fart (I am still on the course), but there came a point in the mid to late eighties where all the cabbage/thunderflash behaviour stopped.

Directives must have come down from on high. Any Staish aspiring to Air Rank was obviously told that any such banter would be a career stopper. Shawbury was one of the last enclaves to hold out and I fondly remember taking part in a SAS-stylie kidnapping in 1988 of an attractive WRAF from a dining-in night clad in gas-mask and black overalls to the sound of exploding cabbages with some bizarre remote-controlled car that whizzed down the table and squirted the PMC with water. It was a big op, there was also so much orange smoke in the bloody room that our target had to be selected by the grope technique. It was dark and we went through several targets, some willing, some not, some male (to our embarrassment), some indeterminate. Some were probably even senior officers, but we could have put that down to unavoidable collateral damage.

Have you ever tried saying sorry to someone for feeling their private parts in a dark room full of orange smoke when there is a large thunderclap of noise every few seconds? Wearing a gasmask? It's not easy, I assure you.

Anyway, we succeeded in woman-handling the WRAF out. She was wearing that ghastly light blue spandex RAF long evening dress effort they used to issue, regardless of whether you resembled a rhino or Claudia Schiffer.

Fortunately, she was quite fit in all respects and struggled a bit, causing said spandex to ride up and reveal some top quality webbing. Visible only through the orange smoke pierced by vivid flashes from the thundies. It must have been quite erotic if you were sober and looking in the right direction.

I bet nobody was.

Me neither ....but if you guys are in the UK you should be aware of how seriously offences under the various Firearms Acts are now viewed by the judiciary - they are guided by the main sentencing case of R v Avis - which says, basically, that any offence, other than very minor transgressions, warrants a custodial sentence. The problem will arise if anyone is injured or significant damage is caused and plod gets involved.
Take care !

NRU74

Absolutely. Before I got carried away. The burnt nav at Valley and the windowed kid at Benson put a stopper on Mess Rugby or any other such banter. Senior officers will now leave the bar rather than control/lead their lads.

This is the age in which we live. Don't get me wrong, that nav was really quite burnt and it was all wrong. Unfortunately we have now entered a new time. I still played bicycle-back jousting in the Mess at Linton as recently as 2001 and won spectacularly. Bloody hurt, spectacular bruise, bike totally knackered. Not a 3 striper in sight.

One fondly recalls the minimalist answer to the TF in cabbage device (aka instant coleslaw).

Firecrackers (from 28 in HK) cut into individual "bangs" and inserted into individual grapes. A (very) short fuse and a skillfully timed lob resulted in the "airburst grape". :ok:

Chocolate or Normal?

Garlic Bread
 

Update from the front.

Decided to go with 3 ft of plastic drain pipe sealed with a propper screw-on end cap. Propellant made from a half full, small, plastic water bottle with a few pieces of dry-ice added, screw cap securely fastened and inserted cap first into the barrel of the launcher.

Quickly throw in the projectile (tennis ball) and stand well back. Wait for about 30 seconds while the dry-ice fizzes off and expands the water bottle to bursting point, then watch the projectile blast about 100 mtrs and win the competition. Good, loud bang too!

Thanks for all the good info and help.



Water and dry-ice. I've seen it. It's the future.

sounding rockets...
 

I wasn't there, but about 25 or so years ago some people
were at an Italian Air base in Sardinia, firing a couple
of sounding rockets 60 or 70 miles straight up. At the end of the campaign they found they had a few rocket igniters left
over. Since they were in the Officers mess and had had a drink or two they decided to connect a battery to one of these. Apparently after that it's not really necessary to open
the windows anymore.