66 replies to this topic

[phildunford]

Good patching up though, you'd never know anything went wrong!

Went wrong? Surely such a thing could never occur...

[Mixologist]

Good patching up though, you'd never know anything went wrong!

Some lovely material in there, what went wrong?

[Altus]

Some lovely material in there, what went wrong?

We were using two digital firing systems one to control the front and side smaller caliber shells and then a second for the larger mortars at the rear and rear sides. Only the system for the fronts fired. Seemed to be some voltage or dead mans switch issue on the second unit which prevented the ematches from firing. Meant they had to go fire the bigger stuff by hand.

[dave]

My video now up on youtube:

Video

nice video, but imho would have been better without the crappy soundtrack and just the fireworks.

incidentally, for those members who were unable to make the agm, do you plan to make the minutes available to all members ? to download perhaps, or even get sent out a copy ?

dave

[Vic]

A superb day and I appreciate all the time and hard work that people spent to make it all happen. The man of the day in my eyes without doubt was Wayne - his dedication and dogged work over the last few years working for us with legislative review group, my hat comes off to that man.
On a another note about the display, I will add it was a brilliant and professional display and I wouldn’t have expected anything different from our friends in the north and to be able see it first hand or to help out with all the rigging up and the light hearted chat, is unmissable for some.
But it did take some important members away from their duties and presence during the talks.
I suggest we could try in future AGM's that we could have smallish demonstrations of individual effects that many of us are interested in and would like to see in their own right.

[phildunford]

Nothing is ever simple & you can't please all of the people all of the time!

The display has grown and grown, but this year there were substancially less people there than last year, tailing off of interest? too nice a day? location? I don't know...

There are only a very small number of us who actively do the work and planning. It's not glamourous, it's not visible and it's hard time-consuming work. We try to give the day broad appeal and for a tiny organisation, I think we do pretty well.

If I'm still around next year, I would like to have a major rethink and we (as we always do) will take everyones views into consideration.

[Mixologist]

We were using two digital firing systems one to control the front and side smaller caliber shells and then a second for the larger mortars at the rear and rear sides. Only the system for the fronts fired. Seemed to be some voltage or dead mans switch issue on the second unit which prevented the ematches from firing. Meant they had to go fire the bigger stuff by hand.

Interesting, what systems?

Still, well recovered, the amount of times I have forgotten my blowtorch and hoped to god a show fires all well, otherwise id be running round with a PP3 battery!!

[wayne]

A superb day and I appreciate all the time and hard work that people spent to make it all happen. The man of the day in my eyes without doubt was Wayne - his dedication and dogged work over the last few years working for us with legislative review group, my hat comes off to that man.
On a another note about the display, I will add it was a brilliant and professional display and I wouldn’t have expected anything different from our friends in the north and to be able see it first hand or to help out with all the rigging up and the light hearted chat, is unmissable for some.
But it did take some important members away from their duties and presence during the talks.
I suggest we could try in future AGM's that we could have smallish demonstrations of individual effects that many of us are interested in and would like to see in their own right.

Hi Vic,

Thank you very much for the kind words, its much appreciated. I'm hoping that I should have more to report in the coming months...fingers crossed! For those interested, this is the post that I mentioned in the presentation that contains the current documents and the thread I will keep up to date with any progress:

CLICK HERE

I'll keep plugging away and hopefully one day MSER will reflect our needs too!

Cheers,

Wayne.

Edited by wayne, 11 April 2011 - 08:13 PM.

[phildunford]

On another matter, I will put up all the presentations (once cleared by the owners) as requested & will also put up some sort of summary if I have time. There will also be a bit in Spark, but given that I was involved all the time, I was not in a position to make notes.

[starseeker]

Well done to all who made the Agm a success,everybody involved with the display,all the speakers and everybody who made the effort to attend.

Reading through the posts regarding different aspects of the Agm i think all have there valid points.
I for one would have to question making a near 600mile round trip if the display was thought as been not important to the day.
I think everybody has there reasons for attending,and for me it is the chance to have a good social with some people you may only see once a year,and if you attend all the talks etc there is little time to socialise.I think as has been suggested two or three breaks through the day would be good,otherwise it can start to feel like you are back at school.

On a positive note it was great to have a chat with some new members and thanks to Phill for his hospitality and whistlestop siteseeing tour including the woolpack!

all in all great weekend.

[crystal palace fireworks]

Nothing is ever simple & you can't please all of the people all of the time!

The display has grown and grown, but this year there were substancially less people there than last year, tailing off of interest? too nice a day? location? I don't know...

There are only a very small number of us who actively do the work and planning. It's not glamourous, it's not visible and it's hard time-consuming work. We try to give the day broad appeal and for a tiny organisation, I think we do pretty well.

If I'm still around next year, I would like to have a major rethink and we (as we always do) will take everyones views into consideration.

Phil,

The down turn in numbers this year is probably due to a few undefined factors, those being; distance to the event, cost of travel, cost of B&B/hotel accomodation, lack of preperation/determination of members to organise a car sharing scheme to get to the event, weather on the day, lack of enough offers from members to put other members up for night in there homes, ukps membership mainly in the south, recession, and partly the predictability of the event itself.

When I talk to friends or others not involved with fireworks about our AGM, the first thing that comes into there minds is; what does AGM stand for? then when you begin to tell them they automatically think of some clicky nerds convention or boring informal straight jacketed powerpoint presentation.

I think we need to make the UKPS AGM event more interesting and inviting to the general public, perhaps we should have a stand at something like the BBC `Bang Go`s The Theory` science road show? we could approach the BBC and it sponsors to pay for a stand and our firework display to cover costs, there could be practical demo`s, a chance to publicise & raise more money for the museum project, recruit more members, raise our profile etc.

Just a thought!

[pyrotrev]

PhWhen I talk to friends or others not involved with fireworks about our AGM, the first thing that comes into there minds is; what does AGM stand for? then when you begin to tell them they automatically think of some clicky nerds convention or boring informal straight jacketed powerpoint presentation.

I agree, it wasn't a stuffy day - why not call it something like the UKPS Annual Convention??? All the formal stuff was dealt with commendably quickly and the rest of the day was very interesting and informative. Having been very occupied with setting up the display last year it was nice to be able to go to most of the talks - though I felt for Paul + Phill - if there's some way to avoid this conflict it would be cool.

[pnw]

Hi Dan,
Here is a link to the ground zero footage - http://www.youtube.c...nel_video_title
Will post more videos asap and let you all know.
Cheers
Paul

[Vic]

Some more footage of the AGM fireworks Fireworks