WA group shoot - September 29
On September 29 we had our third Washington PyroU group shoot (second here). I didn't get the chance to document this was nearly as well as the last time, so this post will be fairly brief.
We shot in Arlington this time instead of Steve's place, this was on another reservation with a stand run by PyroU member EddieO. The stand is actually a good size building that you can walk around in, which was a bit of a novelty for me, and is run by volunteers to support youth programs for the tribe. Along with all the other things I didn't get pictures of was the store. Damn! Frank, another member of the tribe did more of the day to day operations and was very helpful.
Anyway, the big news this time was weather. I had to drive up from Portland as usual, so I was pretty unsure about it. I decided to risk it, and while the weather complicated things, I'm still happy I went! We had a few tents, which led to lots of huddling around under them and limited all getting together to chat, which was unfortunate. We had a pretty good turnout, and the most noteworthy aspect was other people actually entered boards (20 200g cakes) for our friendly competition. I was the defending champion, having won by default last time, so it was nice to have some other people!
I was getting most of my product from Steve, and he got there later in the evening, so in the meantime I helped other people set up, chatted, and just hung out in general. When Steve arrived I had to rush to get my board together, and I was still working on it when people started shooting, so I didn't see everything. We had light to medium rain pretty much all day from 2-9pm, which sucked, but was still workable. I hurriedly finished my board (seen above) with these cakes:
2x Zinger (WC) + 1x Nasty Boy (GG)
2x Merlins Magic (WC) + 1x Free Fall (BP)
2x Deja Blue (Boomer)
2x Night Vision (BP) + 2x Boiling Point (Boomer)
2x Zoot Suit (GG)
2x Pyro Fever (Cannon)
4x Beware (WC)
My goal was to use lots of angles, mostly cakes I (and hopefully other people) hadn't seen before, and have several visually distinct sections. The cakes were all great, I was very impressed with Zinger, Night Vision, and Beware. Zoot Suit was also very good, although I have shot it before, and Boiling Point seemed good, though it was coverd up a bit by the other cakes. All the items I had worked well together and when things were firing, they looked great, but it got screwed up! (video below). I didn't protect my stickymatch enough, and the first two sections went at the same time, leading to a pause before Deja Blue, and it happened again after Zoot Suit! That left me with a lot of dead sky and knocked me out any chance at winning.
Others had good boards, but several people had fusing problems. The board above right was Tim/missinglink's, which was great, but stopped about halfway through and had to be relit. Above left is Chris/seuss1973's, which was cool but stopped several times. Moodog was judged with winner by Eddie, I don't have a picture of his board, but it had a consistent pace and looked good, although it was more a "lots of stuff at once" sort of thing than being planned out in more detail like mine. Just different styles...he won $200 (retail) in fireworks from EddieO, which was a pretty sweet prize!
Left is another board, this one with a cake on fire some time after it was done. You can see this one has fusing issues too, with three unfired cakes.
Anyway, the big news this time was weather. I had to drive up from Portland as usual, so I was pretty unsure about it. I decided to risk it, and while the weather complicated things, I'm still happy I went! We had a few tents, which led to lots of huddling around under them and limited all getting together to chat, which was unfortunate. We had a pretty good turnout, and the most noteworthy aspect was other people actually entered boards (20 200g cakes) for our friendly competition. I was the defending champion, having won by default last time, so it was nice to have some other people!
I was getting most of my product from Steve, and he got there later in the evening, so in the meantime I helped other people set up, chatted, and just hung out in general. When Steve arrived I had to rush to get my board together, and I was still working on it when people started shooting, so I didn't see everything. We had light to medium rain pretty much all day from 2-9pm, which sucked, but was still workable. I hurriedly finished my board (seen above) with these cakes:
2x Merlins Magic (WC) + 1x Free Fall (BP)
2x Deja Blue (Boomer)
2x Night Vision (BP) + 2x Boiling Point (Boomer)
2x Zoot Suit (GG)
2x Pyro Fever (Cannon)
4x Beware (WC)
My goal was to use lots of angles, mostly cakes I (and hopefully other people) hadn't seen before, and have several visually distinct sections. The cakes were all great, I was very impressed with Zinger, Night Vision, and Beware. Zoot Suit was also very good, although I have shot it before, and Boiling Point seemed good, though it was coverd up a bit by the other cakes. All the items I had worked well together and when things were firing, they looked great, but it got screwed up! (video below). I didn't protect my stickymatch enough, and the first two sections went at the same time, leading to a pause before Deja Blue, and it happened again after Zoot Suit! That left me with a lot of dead sky and knocked me out any chance at winning.
Others had good boards, but several people had fusing problems. The board above right was Tim/missinglink's, which was great, but stopped about halfway through and had to be relit. Above left is Chris/seuss1973's, which was cool but stopped several times. Moodog was judged with winner by Eddie, I don't have a picture of his board, but it had a consistent pace and looked good, although it was more a "lots of stuff at once" sort of thing than being planned out in more detail like mine. Just different styles...he won $200 (retail) in fireworks from EddieO, which was a pretty sweet prize!
Right is a rack of Excals I fused up for Tim. Each row was fused with slow visco and I tried to pick out nice matching shells for a nice slow display. That didn't happen, however, and it went about three times faster than I intended (video below). Oh well, it still looked good! I've had good luck fusing this way, but it seems shells ignited early from the lift of previous shells, racks I have fused this way may have had more delay from using HDPE, which is thicker so they are spaced more.
Anyway, we shot a lot of single stuff and boards, but didn't do an organized show like last time. We were planning on it, but ended up not doing it because of the weather primarily. It was a nice to see so many single items, even though I forgot the names of most of them. I only had a few 200g cakes and some candles besides my board, but other people brought a good ammount of stuff, and Eddie and some other guys in the local fireworks business showed up and shot some cool stuff I hadn't seen before. The rain actually stopped after about an hour of shooting in the drizzle and it got to be perfect fireworks weather, which was pretty sweet. On to the videos...
Clip 1 - I don't know whose board this was, but it looked pretty good and used a lot of Wolverine stuff. Swimming Pearls is an amazing cake...
Clip 2 - I don't know what this is, it just looked cool and was one of the few things I got on video, my camera shutter button was being screwy.
Clip 3 - Part of my board, this has the end of Zinger, Nasty Boy, Merlins Magic, and Free Fall, then the first delay and the start of Deja Blue.
Clip 4 - Part two of my board, Night Vision and Boiling Point, but the Zoot Suits go early, leading to another delay!
Clip 5 - Part three of my board! The pauses at least gave my camera time to save and still get a little of the next section... This is the finale with 4x Beware.
Clip 6 - Tim's Excal rack. The slow part at the end is one row out of three going at the intended speed. It would have looked great, but the big puke was still pretty fun...
All in all, we got a bit wet, but had a good time. I wish I got more
pictures of people, the site, and the store, but I was too busy with
other things! Oh well. After we wrapped up shooting at around 11pm, I
still wanted a few things from the store (we got a discount!) and the
fact that it helped a good cause was a nice excuse to buy a few items
at least... As if I needed an excuse... I'm excited to try out Storm Cadence, and the others are just good general purpose cakes, I plan on using them all in the show I'm trying to put on for my school.
My next adventure is a 1.3G shoot with Wolverine on Saturday (Oct 7), so hopefully there won't be any rain and I'll document it a little better...
Anyway, we shot a lot of single stuff and boards, but didn't do an organized show like last time. We were planning on it, but ended up not doing it because of the weather primarily. It was a nice to see so many single items, even though I forgot the names of most of them. I only had a few 200g cakes and some candles besides my board, but other people brought a good ammount of stuff, and Eddie and some other guys in the local fireworks business showed up and shot some cool stuff I hadn't seen before. The rain actually stopped after about an hour of shooting in the drizzle and it got to be perfect fireworks weather, which was pretty sweet. On to the videos...
Clip 1 - I don't know whose board this was, but it looked pretty good and used a lot of Wolverine stuff. Swimming Pearls is an amazing cake...
Clip 2 - I don't know what this is, it just looked cool and was one of the few things I got on video, my camera shutter button was being screwy.
Clip 3 - Part of my board, this has the end of Zinger, Nasty Boy, Merlins Magic, and Free Fall, then the first delay and the start of Deja Blue.
Clip 4 - Part two of my board, Night Vision and Boiling Point, but the Zoot Suits go early, leading to another delay!
Clip 5 - Part three of my board! The pauses at least gave my camera time to save and still get a little of the next section... This is the finale with 4x Beware.
Clip 6 - Tim's Excal rack. The slow part at the end is one row out of three going at the intended speed. It would have looked great, but the big puke was still pretty fun...
My next adventure is a 1.3G shoot with Wolverine on Saturday (Oct 7), so hopefully there won't be any rain and I'll document it a little better...
