Kongming's lanterns are usually set off on major festivals such as Lantern Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival.
People can't control the drifting direction of Kongming lanterns, so they can only "resign themselves to fate". Once the wind direction is unstable or improperly set off after liftoff, Kongming lanterns will directly threaten the safety of airplanes, high-voltage power supply equipment, communication facilities, mountains and various buildings, and do great harm to ground fire safety.
Kongming lantern structure
The structure of Kongming Lantern can be divided into three parts: main body, bottom ring and fuel. The main body is mostly safe and flame-retardant cotton paper or thickened flame-retardant copying paper, and ordinary paper is not resistant to high temperature, so most of the lanterns sold in the market are safe and flame-retardant paper with flame retardant added, and the base is bamboo grates and iron wires (some foreign trade goods exported abroad use bottom rings made of bamboo strips and high-grade flame-retardant cotton threads).
Most of the oversized bottom rings of Kongming lanterns are made of FRP rods and plastic-coated iron wires, and there are many kinds of fuels for Kongming lanterns. The most common fuel is small white wax block fuel, and its main components are asbestos and wax oil. The slightly high-grade fuel used for Kongming lanterns is generally cotton fuel specially made for cardboard and cotton cloth, which has greater firepower.
Kongming lanterns can be large or small, generally oval, heart-shaped, cylindrical or rectangular. In recent years, some novel styles have appeared in the market, such as four-color model, floating tail oval model, butterfly model and maple leaf-shaped Kongming lantern. Generally speaking, Kongming lanterns are barrel-shaped made of bamboo pieces, surrounded by thin white paper, and their openings are downward.