Hi all, before I buy up a 1/35 scale sackload of this experimental pyro-mix, your opinion matters – does these shots look OK or not? Views of vets who’ve had first-hand experience of this kind of munition particularly welcomed. (& if like me you’re not altogether sure, I can post more shots) Thanks, Tim

Tim,
I love all the experimenting you are doing with photo techniques. Very intriguing.

In my experience the trail left in a photo by a tracer round is going to be longer and straighter than that pyro is producing in those photos.

What I really don't know is whether tracers would have typically been used at that time in the scenarios you have depicted. The problem with tracers is that they are at least as effective at showing the enemy where from where the fire is coming as they are at showing you where your shots are going.

Tracer leaves a long continuous flare from the muzzle to the target. As a section commander I always used to have the top two and next to bottom two rounds in a mag as tracer. First two for target indication and the other two to let me know to change mag if I'd lost count. Was a good system as I never got "dead mans click". I'm not sure what the breakdown of belted ammo would have been during WW2 as ours was 4 ball,1 tracer unless we made our own belts up specifically then we'd go one in 2. Just depended what we were up to. Don't forget as well if a tracer hits something solid while it's still burning it can ricochet vertically leaving a vertical flare. I watched our SF platoon putting fire into a valley once before we assaulted and tracer rounds were flying off at all directions and angles. Looked really cool. While the pics look cool they don't really depict tracer rounds accurately I'm afraid.

One thing to research is what was the color. Vets' recount being able to tell German vs. America gunfire based on the tracer color. I don't recall what they were however

Conceivably, using a slower shutter speed would give a longer streak, more representative of a real tracer round. However, the pyro is still going to be disproportionately affected by atmosphere so it would be exceedingly difficult to the appropriately straight line. It also appears to me that the pyro is producing a disproportionate amount of smoke compared to smokeless powder.

I do think the 'splashes' on the tank (minus the billowing smoke) look like they could easily be standard .50 cal rounds (vice tracers) ricocheting off the armor.

One thing that could possibly help in the "straighter trails" department is a trick I've heard of being used in the movies...
Orient the dio so that the pyro is firing straight down toward the intended target. It might be a bit of work making sure that nothing falls off during the photo session, but it might be worth it for straight trails. It might even help keep too much smoke from interfering with the photos.

Thanks for the excellent feedback guys, that’s given me some directions on how to improve it. In response & no particular order;

Tracer bullets first used by UK 1915 & USA 1917. Germans used a variety of colours in WW2 for MGs – I found a forum where a guy had bought a cache of 1941/1942 Wehrmacht tracer round boxes (photos to prove it) labeled yellow, orange, white, & green+red(! ). So orange seems authentic.

YouTube has examples of (modern U.S.) tracer rounds creating a lot of smoke, but I take the point. Problem is the barrel has to be pretty close to target to hit it, so the smoke’s unavoidable. But I’ll work on a longer narrower pipe to increase velocity & thereby put more distance, & maybe even a fan blowing it out of frame although that might make for some hilarious u-turns from the tracer sparks too. I’ve probably bored you enough already but I still have to nail a particular problem in the delivery system (I think the technical term is “gun”), namely how to introduce ignition to the charge chamber without the blast going out the same way rather than down the barrel. I was greatly amused to discover on forensic examination that what you see in the 2nd pic all came out of the much narrower in-pipe, not the main barrel at all. A one-way brass valve had worked well - until it melted during this firing – so am redesigning with cold hard steel.

Nice idea about having the camera above the barrel to hide the downward curve trajectory – but again problem is that this raises the viewpoint way too high, I need the camera at 1/35th-man’s eye level or lower. Relates to previous point really – although while it’s very evident in the first pic, no droop in the second pic & I should have clarified the latter is a development of the first…part intentional (mo’ magnesium) and part accidental – refer previous para.

Agreed in the first pic the ricochets could better pass for .50 cal (or rather the nearest German equivalent, which isn’t very) rather than tracer rounds. That might be the way to go if I can refine the pyro mix enough to be reliable. And yes that’s a strange phenomenon about tracer ricochets always (or almost always) going vertical even when impact’s from a flat trajectory at a perpendicular target, there’s a couple of YouTube examples to back that up – how come?

As for length of tracer streak, that’s a balancing act I can’t control enough – remember I’m not using a stills camera, these are frames from video. Even if I could master exposure settings in the Handycam, trying to balance that with prevailing light conditions and pyro mix variables would do my head in. Even if I could get the streak as long as suggested the overall image would probably be badly over-exposed…unless I shot it at dusk or night. Now there’s a thought.

Yeah, reduce the ambient light level and push the camera's automatic sensor into a longer exposure.

You don't have to have the camera above the barrel. The whole dio would be rotated so that the barrel is vertical, which would allow the sparks to fall straight down. The pic would be taken as normal, except that the camera would need to be rotated so that "landscape" would be in relation to the dio and not the actual ground. "Portrait" mode.
Probably easier to do than it is to explain.

Its been almost 50 years but incoming fire was never completely straight. it always had a arc to it the further away the higher the arc , also as the tracer approached you it got larger . and our color tracers were different from the NVA and VC. there was often a ricochet bouncing around too. But,depending on the situation, you didnt use tracers a lot , it gave your position away and reeked havoc on your barrel .

Yes the rounds do arc in flight, but tracers also hit higher on the target than the standard rounds due to the difference in the weight of the projectiles. The difference was about 18 inches at 1200 yards.