Yep, got the czech flares. Recoil from the firing end is pretty stout. I let my 10 year old son fire the first round out of it... mistake. He didn't want to shoot it again. Recoil isn't crazy, it's just more than I thought it would be. The flares do go quite a ways. The smoke... well, looks a lot like the pic up there (smoke starts coming out in flight, then continues to burn for a bit after it hits). You are not going to conceal the movement of an infantry company behind the cloud, but it's a great visual signal.
Back in the day, when I was a snake eater, we would use flares to control our platoon on night ambushes (cease fire, etc). It's hard to hear people yelling commands when you're puttin' the smack down. In addition to the obvious signalling and illumination uses, I could also see using them to remotely ignite an accelerant that was strategically placed or thrown (armor or ?).
Any way you look at it, they're good fun.
