Pete B

Hey guys, heres my first bash at doing a propper show (a private one).

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=386482512228

Appologies for the poor video quality, I didnt have time to set up my HD cam and so this came off people's phones. The facebook one is better, but for those not on, here's youtube's version:




Last November (UK Guy Fawkes night) I'd spent months putting together my own little pyromusical and laser show, unfortunately it never came off thanks to bad weather on the night. Well those fireworks have sat in storage until April 10th when I was finally able to let it go.

The show was originally 12 minutes but on the last song we had a system failure which meant no climax and more than 50% of the stuff throughout didn't fire either at all, or on time. Was still incredible fun putting together and watching it.

Lessons learned:
1. Allow more time for setup!
2. Test everything twice, before show day!
3. Never let inexpirienced friends offer to help with igniters, no matter how kind and generous they are.

I've just come into possession of some 3" ID cardboard tubes, 690mm long, with an 11mm wall thickness. They are spiral wound.

I'm wondering if they would be good enough to use as mortars for 3" shells, if not they would do for bag mines, right? I can get loads more too, might as well recycle if I can.


Also, what's the ideal wall thickness for a 2" cardboard mortar? I'm desperately hunting for some.

Hi Guys!

I saw an effect recently that looked a bit like a starmine, except it was actually more like a fountain that went off really fast i.e. using them as hits in a pyro musical. Like a blast of sudden fluffy pyro stuff

I got thinking about how you would make something like this. Would it work if you just made a normal fountain but without the choke, so like the end of the tube is more open?

Quick question really...

I've never tried firing a rocket with ematch before because I've always had the fear of "what if it takes the wires up with it", so was wondering if anyone had some ideas and suggestions on how to do this properly, in other words making sure the ematch disconnects from the fuse when it pops.

Ideally I'd like to have all my rockets in a rack and do it this way instead of by hand.

Hi there!

I've done a search on forum and read all the topics on firing systems but I wanted to start a new topic to get some opinions on my ideas and so on. I'm currently doing stuff for my own private use (mostly 5th November) using 1.4G fireworks and some small homemade fountains, mines, and roman candles. Nothing too adverturous.

I started off with the old hand lighting method, then moved on to nail boards and similar, however, this year I want to build a computer firing system and was thinking of going down the Midi route using something like this: http://www.gemhut.com/hmeproducts.htm which would pretty much give me 128 cues to start with, and plenty of room to expand later. I work with Midi everyday as I'm an audio engineer and my idea is to use Cubase to sync the midi cues with a musical track. Cubase also generates SMPTE time code so I can sync DMX effect lighting, lasers, and even video if I ever wanted to.

Has anyone else here ever done this? What would be the best way to make it safe and robust, as obviously I dont want pyros firing everywhere uncontrolled?