Sumner Bridge Lighting 2008 - November 28

The weather last year was great, but November in Washington can be pretty wet, so we were prepared for rain. Every cake was wrapped in carpet protection tape, which I had read about but hadn't seen used before. The tape is wide and sticky on one side, so it is easy to wrap cakes and cover tubes, making them nearly waterproof. Because it is pretty thin plastic, you can fire right through it. Luckily it didn't rain beyond a tiny mist for a short time, but it was good to have and is a very useful trick.

The site was the same as last year, with two firing positions. One closer to the bridge and one on the other side of the library. The product used was 35+ 500g cakes, 24 200g cakes, 24 "baby B" cakes, three large 1.3G cakes, and some shells, mines and comets at each position. I liked that there were far fewer salutes this time, although there were certainly some noisy moments.

At most points in the show, the same items fired from eaach position, often pairs of 500g cakes or groups of three 200g cakes. The large 1.3G cakes were at the further position for obvious safety reasons, so during those cakes, 500g 1.4G cakes were used at the position near the bridge.

The show was limited to only 5 minutes because they didn't want to block the road for too long, but because we fired from two locations the product was split and kept the whole thing from being a sky puke. There were a couple items I particularly wanted to watch for; Pow Bam, Nine, and Swimming Pearls. I wanted to compare the break size and effects between the two nine-shot cakes to help plan my own shows. I haven't seen Pow Bam shot in a while, and last time I helped on a show where a Nine was used there were too many other things going to pick out the breaks. Swimming Pearls is the version from the new factory that didn't swim (oops, the factory screwed up!), so I wanted to see what it did.

(Far right - Continuity testing. The firing system was located between the two positions.)

(Right - Other position with bridge in the background.)

The nice thing about shooting this time of year is that it gets dark early, so showtime was 5pm! The show was very nice overall, with a few hiccups. There was some unintentional dark sky at one point (possibly from making a mistake on a cake duration) and two cakes didn't fire, one of which was the Pow Bam I was looking for, so that plan was foiled. The visco leader ignited but the first lift charge didn't go for whatever reason. I was watching at the position further from the bridge because it was a better spot to get video and I could also see the large 1.3G display cakes, though you could see the other position firing the whole time because it was in line with where I watched from. The colors in Swimming Pearls were fantastic, although it certainly didn't swim! (which is why they aren't selling on the consumer market). I might want it to fire a little faster, but I have high hopes for what it could be if the factory gets it right. I do sort of miss the nice long tails on the old version though...

Anyway, it was a good show and we were done with cleanup by 6pm, which was pretty awesome.

Direct link to video here (32MB .wmv)

Next up is a show in Lakewood on Dec 10th. I have an appointment that day so I don't think I'll make it to setup, but I'm hoping to at least get there in time to watch the show.