Trouble when model goes offscreen

So, I use the dummy model (invisible, with an animation for each pitch angle) for my projectiles (units that are moved by a particle system) and I attach the actual projectile model to them as a special effects. The model in question is a modified mortar projectile that has a light attached. I destroy the special effect when the projectile hits, so it plays it's death animation then.

This is all working nicely, as long as the camera follows the projectile. I get odd bugs, though, when the projectile flies offscreen. What occurs is that the special effect seems to stop moving with the projectile when it's offscreen. Because of that, the light from the projectile stays at the edge of the screen, ilumminating the terrain that's on the screen even when the projectile has moved far away in the meantime.

When the special effect is destroyed, because it's offscreen, it doesn't update so I neither get the flash of light that occurs on death animation nor does the light from the stand animation that's still there disappear. What does occur is that the crater that the mortar projectile leaves behind on it's death animation appears where the projectile went offscreen (in the same place that the light persists) instead of where it actualy died.

I tried increasing the extents of both the projectile model and the dummy model, but neither solved my problem. The effect simply stops updating when the unit it is attached to leaves the screen and some of it's effects (the stand animation light, the crater created on death animation) persist at the point where it went offscreen.

That sounds more of the way fx are handled by the engine, rather than a model issue. The extents just control the range in wich the model is still visible, the way they are updated is a whole another thing.

Hmm, yes, that occured to me after I already posted. We'll, thanks for your time, I'll experiment some more with using the mortar as the unit model instead of a sfx attachment, or making the mortar model and the light model seperate, or other stuff that will come to mind.