[MathGeek]

Originally Posted by keakar

why not something like this? http://potato-gun.wonderhowto.com/ho...azooka-316369/

its cheap, simple, light weight, and very portable and you don't need to drag air tanks around and it looks to have the power to get all the distance you need

We really want a design to get baits consistently out to 600' from the beach.

We've worked a lot with combustion driven launchers both aerosols (hair spray, rem oil, Brut anti-perspirant, etc.) and pure fuels (acetylene, propane, butane, methanol, ethanol), and we've even published several papers. The bottom line with combustion driven launchers is that even when you carefully measure the fuel and have a uniform projectile, you get wide variations in velocities which translate to wide variations in distance. Yes, these things sometimes will give you a 600' flight, but you will also get a lot of 200-400' distances.

When you're launching a mullet frozen in a cylindrical ice "bullet" with a hook and a sinker, you really want a consistent distance, because each launch attempt uses up a carefully prepared frozen bait.