Sky Lanterns, the cheapest legal / borderline illegal fun you can have
 

Bought like 20 of these $1.80/ea suckers for Christmas so everyone can have one to send off. Apparently it's a chore and plenty of entertainment just getting one of them up. Some went off smoothly into the sky but some others barely made it over nearby trees and a couple failed to gain hardly any altitude and we had to chase them down in the golf cart in fear of them setting a neighbors house on fire. Ordered more for New Years. Merry Christmas :1orglaugh

I love those things.

i cant afford them... :(

looks great :thumbsup

But what goes up must come down, and farmers in haparticular have become increasingly haconcerned that livestock might swallow a lantern's wire or habamboo frame, or, even worse, that fires might break out in hay barns.

"If swallowed, the wire could puncture the stomach lining, and in some cases this could prove fatal," says Mike Thomas, a NFU spokesman. "There's also a good chance that the wire could get wrapped around an animal's foot and become embedded in the skin, which would be terribly painful."

Elsewhere, coastguards say lanterns, which can travel for several kilometres and to an haaltitude of 1,000m before the candle burns out, are routinely mistaken for distress flares. A handful of east Asian countries, such as haVietnam, Malaysia and Thailand, have already introduced bans, particularly in the lead up to hamajor festivals.

An Essex-based company called Sky Lanterns, which claims to be the "world's haleading supplier", says it would like to see wire-framed lanterns banned and is now developing a new wire-free lantern that will be "coming in the next month or so". It recommends that harevellers let the local coastguard know in advance if they are planning to light any halanterns, never release them near dry crops, nor within five miles of an airport, nor in winds above 5mph. They should also ensure "trees are not in the flight path".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...r-farm-animals

I had never seen/heard of them before now .... very cool.

But how do you know where they land, and that they don't burn down somebody's house?!? :eek2

You don't, that's the fun part I guess. :1orglaugh Stupid people fun.

Very common in Asia. We set them off for just about any holiday possible. New Years there are usually 1000s of them in the sky.

You have to light them and hold them to the ground so the heat builds up inside. Think hot air balloon, but small scale. Just let it sit there and heat up. It will usually let you know when it's ready to fly, then just lift it and let it go.

If you want to have some more fun, tie strings of a few firecrackers to the bottom of it and light them as it starts to take flight.

http://talesfromabarstool.com/wp-con...i-thailand.jpg

Holy shit that pic doesn't even look real !

And farm animals getting the wires around the foot are the lucky ones because they get helped in the end. Wild animals will lose the foot and possibly die a horrid slow dead due to infection. And in Brazil they caused a huge forest fire last year, they've been banned years ago already but people still use them.

now if they could carry paper bags of dog shit...

From what I experienced trying to get these things to go off, that would have been a picture of a mass burning/disaster/suicide. :1orglaugh

It's not rocket science of course, we held each one upright until it felt like it wanted to take off and then gently nudged them up into the air, but some of them wanted to come back down on us, some barely go up and head towards a tree across the street, some hover 100ft over neighbors houses for a mile or so. There was no wind. The couple that we did chase down we noticed some people in the neighborhood outside on their phone looking at it, probably calling the cops. :1orglaugh

Maybe it's because I got the cheapo ones from Hong Kong.

haha, yeah i set some off. first went off fine. then rather than wait till they are nice and warm and full of hot air, let one off. Went over to neighbours house and bounced around his bedroom window and under the eaves before it flew off. Ooops. should have stopped there, next one went the same and bounced around in his conifer, paper caught alight and burnt a chunk out of it, LOL. Still, have plenty left as when they do go they fly for ages :)

Won't be long until those go the way of the lawn dart.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh I remember those :helpme

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We launched about 50 of them off of our dock this past summer.

But aren't they dangerous, cause fires, etc?

They look cool as shit so fuck the consequences i guess.

http://i40.tinypic.com/1rqjp5.jpg

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Hmmmm. The may have made them too heavy. I suppose that is possible.

What did yours use as fuel that you lit? Was it wrapped rubber or something else?



The USA will ban them, no doubt about that. But they have been doing it in parts of Asia for over 1000 years or more.

I'm sure they could, but as long as they go up, they are supposed to burn out in the sky and fall down with no flame.

Never tried those, look great indeed!

i like paper bags of dog shit... :thumbsup

Poor, poor farmers. Animals MIGHT swallow bamboo? This differs from any other form of twig in a field exactly how? So the wire might not be so great, but most live stock is pretty good at eating around old bits of barbed wire. Fires MIGHT break out in haybarns? How many have? Exactly none so far would be my guess. It's not like UK farmers have a particular aversion to fire in the first place, stubble burning had to be banned to get them to stop setting whole fields on fire.

And this from farmers who are usually queuing up to be brutal to badgers and their own livestock. Only last week there was an item about cutting off piglets tails and teeth with blunt scissors in the news in the UK. Hmmm, how about a comment on that Mr NFU spokesman?

And as for mistaken for flares. Oh yes, we have many flares let off in distress in the UK, especially on those calm days when we might launch balloons. But yes, I'm sure our rescue services are that crap and could mistake balloons for flares in much the same way they can arses for elbows.

I'm going to chalk up the menance of balloons in this case to the NFU taking the chance to whine and no doubt angle for some cash and the Guardian to take its usual stance and want EVERYTHING banned.

As the photos show, somewhere in the world they managed to launch about 5000 in one go and clearly got away with it without too many fatalites.

And to put the risk into prespective, think for a second how many fireworks get launched Nov 5 on bonfire night. Anyone ever heard of someone being hit or their car dented by a falling rocket?

There are places where lighting anything and letting it float about randomly during the dry season would be retarded, but the UK isn't one of them.

its banned in some places here. it burned few houses, one in center of my city, and it is also very ecological, when hundreds of this shit felt to one wineyard. its nice, but crap

Fantastic photo :thumbsup

Natalie & I let one off on Christmas night.... it was pretty windy so took off like a trooper & went miles :pimp

very cool, never seen those before ... and this

looks truely amazing :thumbsup

Humans are always thinking up ways to litter the earth.

just ... WOW!

Because it's wrapped in wire, covered in a fuel, and on fire.

http://www.rnli.org.uk/who_we_are/pr...ticleid=670627

There's one case. But really, there are other countries in the world except the UK. I know thatcher taught you just to look out for yourself, but some of us can think of others.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?clien...M4vG8QOY4OCuAQ

Are you even trying?

:D

It's a square of white wax. I don't think they could have been any lighter. I think it's just the design that was shitty (heart shaped, but the hole was small) and in the air they kept wanting to tip over and leak hot air out causing them to lose altitude.

It would be cool to make a thousand of them shaped like dildos and set them off at the next Westboro Church family gathering. Not that I'd ever do that! Just a fictional idea. Heheh.

i set people on fire and tie a balloon to their cocks

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh wtf?

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:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh now that i would pay to see;)

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I haven't seen anything like that in Thailand yet, it's fantastic :thumbsup

my house is next to an airport - might be great fun to start there a dozen.....

...and somewhere there's an insurance company quietly planning to raise its rates.

Was this you?!? LOL :1orglaugh




(GREAT TITTIES ALERT!!!)

fuck, humans are a stupid species :2 cents::helpme:321GFY

great pic