Talon Ignitor Question

[Big Worm]

Two years ago I bought a cheap six cue firing system (FF-6A) it has a 12 button remote, it seems fairly common. It came with a few clip on ignitors, and then I purchased a bunch also at the same place. This year I purchased a few from Pyroboom to fill some gift card space, and realized that they where quite different. The cheap ones say 008 on the clip and the Red Dragon ones say 007. Does that refer to the size of the wire in the clip? They look the same, but the Red Dragon ignitors seem to have a wire that is twice as thick as the others and are also coated in some sort of Red paste that the cheap ones didn't have. I haven't tried any of the new ones yet. The first time I used the cheap ones it was hard to get it to work on the bigger diameter fuse. When I would clip it on perfect fuse on fast fuse it would break the wire, they really only worked on the smaller diameter cake fuses. I was thinking of switching to an e-match into a fast fuse bundle or right into the first cake maybe, but these look to be half promising. Does any have any experience with the Red Dragon ignitors?

[esgrillo]

Bigworm, the 007 and 008 are basically serial #'s and refer to manufacturing dates. The 007 are older compared to the 008. I do not have experience with the red dragon brand and have no idea what the red coating is as all the talons I have every used have bare wire to contact the fuse. I have been purchasing all my talons from Cobra the last few years but they had the same 007 and 008 numbering. They are probably all made at the same factory.

The difference between the 007 and 008 according to Cobra was their ability to fire when you have several wired in parallel. There is no real difference if you fire one per cue. I use hundreds of talons and ematches and when you install them correctly they both have very good reliability. If you are having issues getting the larger fuse in the talon clip, roll back the rubber band away from the tip. You will be able to open the clip further. Install the fuse and then roll the rubber band back. If you really want to be 100% sure you have it right, check the resistance with a multi-meter although good continuity on you firing system will let you know if you wire is broken.

[Big Worm]

Thanx would of never thought to roll that rubber band back! Can I fire two or three from one cue? I thought I might of saw the answer on one of Dave's videos I'll check that out. I would like to purchase a Cobra hopefully next black Friday, but until then I'm gonna use a couple cheap ones.

[esgrillo]

Thanx would of never thought to roll that rubber band back! Can I fire two or three from one cue? I thought I might of saw the answer on one of Dave's videos I'll check that out. I would like to purchase a Cobra hopefully next black Friday, but until then I'm gonna use a couple cheap ones.

Not sure on a Chinese system, could probably get away with 2 or 3 but I would test first. On a Cobra you can fire up to 8 talons in parallel (never tried more than 5) and 10 ematches in series. Make sure you wire more than one talon in parallel NOT series.

[Big Worm]

Is that one wire from each tied together and the other in the cue?

[esgrillo]

here's the difference:

http://www.pyrotalk.com/bulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=2828&stc=1

[MtnViewPyro]

Big worm, I just did a test with a Chinese system using talons. I posted the video on YouTube but I can tell you it fired 3 talons with ease and the batteries I was using were far from new. I’m pretty sure 4 wouldn’t be asking too much.

[Big Worm]

Let me ask another question, have you ever removed the starter visco fuse from a cake and put quick fuse in instead. I was thinking this is how I would go from cake to cake this year. Quick fuse tied into the end of a cake leading right to the first shot of another cake. I think it would kind of create a one at a time chain of cakes maybe to slow the show a little, but not create a gap. then go back into firing multiples.

[esgrillo]

It is not something I do. When I am shooting multiple cakes like that I usually cut regular visco to the right timing length and then tie to the next cake. I tape it to outside of the cake after I tape the cakes together. It saves a lot of time digging into the cake. I have found in most circumstances the variability within the cake itself is more than the precise timing you are looking to start. I cut the fuse to allow at least 5 sec of overlap to avoid dead sky.

I do use superfast fuse a lot to daisy chain cakes together. What I do is allow around 3-5 sec of delay from when I expect the cake to start firing and fire that cue in the script with that allowance. Of course if the cake has a ematch port built in, I would use it. You can see a good example of this in my last show at 22:09 (the link in my signature) when I start firing three groups of 30 Bump Bear 200g cakes. You can see all three firing positions are going within 1 second of each other and they are fired off using the existing visco and all superfast fuse to chain together. I thought it looked good and I did not cut into any cakes for that sequence.