As if the frigid weather wasn't enough of a challenge for us to get through the day, it turned out that we had two seperate shows to shoot. One at 9:30, and the second one of course at midnight. So, anyone that knows anything about professional fireworks shows would be able to tell you how you've got to maintain a few hours to get everything prepared. And you normally need at least 20-30 minutes to maintain that there are no hanging shells (ones that haven't exploded) in the tubes. And anyone that knows anything about frigid cold weather conditions. knows that its ridiculously cold!!
We got our first show off after one short break to warm up. But then we realized the time constraint we were faced with. And that meant two and a half hours just simply would not be enough time to get the second show together if we were going to warm up, and eat dinner or both. So we skipped those things, and pushed ourselves as hard as you can. As truly difficult as things can be to keep your hands going in that cold. Wiring ematches to delays. Chained with shells. Yes! It was a challenge, but there we were standing in the face of adversity.
seen above are 3 inch brocade shells. The largest legal shell available to consumers is 1.5 inches.
So we narrowly made the time constraint. I may have ended up chaining some things that didn't need to be chained. But we got pretty darn close you know? We got everything into their tubes, and readied all of the things. Not so surprisingly the power continuity read 100%. So, my buddy and I went off to do the hand firing. Not too surprisingly, the shells were frozen, and we weren't able to get certain shells to oact the way they should. But we got everything up, and the customer was happy.
So, hand firing done, we moved to the firing board for the finale. Suddenly the board wasn't responding, there were delays. And all we could hear from the customer was a big thank you coming in through the radio. But we looked to each other knowing, we had to get that finale into the air! So, we grabbed ourselves some road flares, and took off running for the setup to burn all the shells off.
We were going hard, lighting off all the shells, time stood still for those few minutes. I have no idea how long it took. But we were running around burning through the delays, doing what we could to make sure the show went off in a good way. The sequences were thrown to the wind. But the shells were in the air!
At one point, I started up the holy fuck cake. That son of a bitch just goes like made. Shooting fans of sparks all over the place, but it started up so fast that the damn thing put my flare out. Luckily our one shooter had a backup for us, and we got it all up. But it's not something that I want to have to go through again. Hand firing an entire show.
Now I can say I've done that!
