"Garland Gray II" wrote in message news:9EHGc.2177$4Z3.1711@lakeread02...

When i did this, I allowed my kids to fire them since they had never
done so. Initially they were afraid because they thought there would
be a kick, now they will have no problems firing them if needed.


Every year I plan on using my expired flares for practice on July 4th, and
every year I forget to have them on hand (they usually end up in the old
outboard boat). Darned if I didn't forget again this year!
I'll remember next year....
"Matt Koch" wrote in message
m...
Good info and it correlates with my experience.

I usually take my flares up to my dad's country place and fire them
off in the winter. Last winter we had a few really old ones, from the
mid 80's, most of which fired but the flare did not ignite. One of
them, however had the opposite problem, it did not fire but the flare
ignited in the barrel. That was fun!!! Drop that gun and run!!

The other thing that struck me was how much higher the hand helds
wentt and how much longer the burn time was when compared to the Orion
12 gauge flares.

I would recommend firing expired flares if you can. It's good
practice should you ever need to fire them in earnest.

Matt

(Parallax) wrote in message
. com...
Yesterday, I fired 4 expired "Orion" 12 guage flares. All four fired
but only one worked right. Results

expiration year results
1990 Worked correctly
1995 Fired but failed to ignite flare
1998 Fired and flare ignited but only went to 50'
altitude
1998 Fired but flare failed to ignite

2 Current flares: Fired and worked correctly.

Two years ago, on a very rainy New Yrs, I fired a bunch of expired
flares and all fired. However, the rain was so intense that I was
unable to determine if the flares ignited.

This test tells me that although old flares ussually fire, they do not
work well.