John's Birthday show 10-10-09
What happens with a former fireworks display company owner has a birthday? A huge show of course!
I got a phone call a couple weeks ago from John asking if I'd help on a show for his birthday. I hadn't had any smoke in a while so I would have done it anyway, but when he told me they would be shooting 12" nothing would keep me away.
The show had about 2,500 shells, including several 12" shells and a gold section several minutes long. There were probably 25 people helping set up that morning, the racks and sandboxes were done in previous days. The shells were all ematched and marked ahead of time, with tubes marked with corresponding numbers, so setup went fairly smoothly and efficiently. All we had to do that day was drop the shells in the right tube and wire everything up, so after about four and a half hours we were almost done. I had been hoping to get a picture of myself holding a 12" shell because there probably won't be many chances for that in the future, but they had already been dropped the previous day.
There were plenty of pyros there and I had some work to do back home, so I left once things were mostly set up and returned about 45 minutes before showtime (7:30, it sure gets dark early now, a nice change from summer as long as weather cooperates). This time I got to just sit back in my chair and watch the show, without doing any post-show work.
The show was efired with a nailboard and was a lot of fun. It wasn't tightly scripted, but there was some good variety, big salutes, great big shells, nice false finales and a huge finale. The several minutes of gold was a little repetitive and went a little long in my opinion, but was still pretty cool. The show lasted over 30 minutes, which is probably the longest show I've seen and things were always happening.
(Video links at bottom of post)
