World's toughest jobs: Pyrotechnician

[Pretty green flame]

Check this out:

 

Part one: http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=O2To5X6FTTY

Part two: http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=8tXyW3yLTik

 

Is it just me or is this guy incompetent, and running around the firing site like a beheaded chicken seem not the brightest idea out there. Now i've never fired a show myself but i would think that a bit more organisation wouldn't hurt.

 

I don't know, this guy just doesn't seem pyro material, he got scared by a titanium salute, damn, never happened to me

[NightHawkInLight]

That was painful to watch. Someone so clueless getting an opportunity to fire a Premier show is a terrible waste. That guy almost got his head taken off a couple times, made kinda mad actually... That would be such a great job.

[oskarchem]

Hmmm... Pyrotechnitian is quaite a nice job IF you don't have to hand-light them... much better to do it eletronicly

[asilentbob]

Yeah e-match is a lot better.

 

Painful to watch i agree.

[persut]

i herd they tried to kick that guy out of the APA and the PGI for that stunt.

and i believe the PGI wrote Discovery a letter and had that taken off of reruns as well.

[Chris]

Hmm, I've worked as an operator for 3 years. Considering that he had never done it before, I think it wasn't as bad as I expected. It is really important to plan and prepare the firing sequence, so that all movement in the field would progress in a straight line from one firing post to another. It's also pretty important to keep low, one knee in the ground for instance, which he obviously did not do. I agree you should let the professionals do what they can do best.

[Mumbles]

Hmmm... Pyrotechnitian is quaite a nice job IF you don't have to hand-light them... much better to do it eletronicly

E-firing what can be handfired is for pussies. It is quite a rush to have shells going off that close. I do think a hand fired show has something extra that an e-fired show can't. It just seems more personal. They really didn't show him how to do it properly, nor do I know why they are hand firing from racks. That is about the stupidest thing you can do. I'd never hand fire out of anything that isn't burried.

[WarezWally]

Using portfires for large shells in racks is dangerous, he saw what happened when they inverted that ti salute yet he was happy to hand fire a rack!

 

I though the portfires were only cracked out if something went tits up with the e-matches. This segment was very poorly and unprofessionally made. He should have been sitting behind something 50 meters away pushing buttons. Then after the show showing him digging up and cleaning the mortars - not running around like a idiot.

[billyb]

Actually portfires are used very often for lighting racks on professional displays. . Theres nothing wrong with it if you have been trained properly and have the common sense for safety.

 

Racking should be staked into the ground or bundled together if on a hard surface. If its done right theres no problem.

 

Hand firing is way more fun than electronic, the rush of feeling the thump of the lift charge from less than a metre away is unreal.

[WarezWally]

Hand firing is way more fun than electronic, the rush of feeling the thump of the lift charge from less than a metre away is unreal.

Except when that 3" salute misfires and you are 3 feet away wondering what went wrong......

[Pretty green flame]

Hand firing is way more fun than electronic, the rush of feeling the thump of the lift charge from less than a metre away is unreal.

Except when that 3" salute misfires and you are 3 feet away wondering what went wrong......

What kind of damage to the technician are we talking about if a salute does happen to go off in the tube? Death, hearing loss?

[oskarchem]

At the best hearing loss at the worst Death.

[billyb]

Hand firing is way more fun than electronic, the rush of feeling the thump of the lift charge from less than a metre away is unreal.

Except when that 3" salute misfires and you are 3 feet away wondering what went wrong......

That is a risk we take as technicians and the reason we do everything in our power to ensure all pyro is loaded correctly and safely.

 

When firing racks we kneel just off the the side of that particular rack to reduce the risk of fatal injury.

 

I was quite shocked at the lack of PPE used in that video. We use full head gear with anti-shatter visors, complete fire proof overalls and proper ear defenders.

 

Also, why the hell were they letting him light fuses with a blow torch??

[oskarchem]

Yeah and did you see that he was lighting the fuse with a blow torch and like 10cm of bare Visco and then quickmatch!!

[Mumbles]

That wasn't bare visco. That was bare blackmatch. 10cm of visco would have given a 12 second delay.

[oskarchem]

But still, the height of that flame...

[FrKoNaLeaSh1010]

Although I have never done any professional shows i can deffinitely see where people are coming from saying that handfiring the show is a lot more personal and also more of a thrill. You just need to make sure you stay low and off the the side. I would not exactly like to fire large caliber shells out of a rack and would prefer them being buried but as long as the proper precautions and safety measures are taken it "should" not have too many problems if done by proper professionals. Overall i agree with mumbles, E-firing is for pussies....it might be timed better but takes a large part of the thrill/personality out of it.

[Bert]

Premier didn't impress me with this. I've been doing 1.3 displays for 15+ years, and I've been a PGI trainer for the last 3 years. I wouldn't have let that guy out on the field to hand light after 2 practice sessions. I had set up several dozen hand fired shows before I was allowed to light shells by hand when I started, and although we train our new people on hand lighting (in daylight, under controlled conditions) we would never put an inexperienced person in such a position.

 

I guess if they wanted it to look dangerous, they succeeded. And the Premier guy with the 3rd degree burns got them by being an idiot, IMHO. No reason to hurt yourself disposing of duds. Love Premier's high quality roman candles too... Hand firing with cheap, crappy, low quality Chinese import material would not be my first choice. We don't try to screw the Chinese manufacturers out of every penny we can, would you want to be exposed to nothing but low bid products? They also set up the field so that the lighter was trapped in a narrow lane between rows of loaded guns. You want to leave yourself somewhere to run if things go bad-

 

No one at our shows has ever had a worse injury than a mashed toe or finger from handling equipment, or a cut from being clumsy with sharp tools. We fire every display we can electrically. Let's hear you say "electric firing is for pussys" after you quit your day job and do this full time. We want to be doing this as long as we can, with as few accidents as possible.

[Sylar]

I completely agree with bert on this issue.

 

Personal safety has been disregarded far too often with sayings like "that's for pussies".

It is in fact this kind of behaviour that is directly responsible for the worst accidents, the ones that result in serious injury or death.

 

A proper risc assessment must be made for every dangerous situation at work or at home. Even more so as a pyrotechnician.

I think we all can confirm that the risc of burns, serious injury or even loss of life is too high with our kind of hobbies/jobs.

 

So don't take unnescesarry riscs, light larger charges safely from a distance!

[mormanman]

That job looked much more difficult than what I thought a real pyro's job would be like b/c I thought a big company like that would at least have a firing box(es) and I would think that alot of thoughs shells would have a line of quick match.

[tentacles]

I agree with mumbles here, and also bert. Hand firing is something best reserved for a hobbiest pyro, not a professional on the job. If your're in business doing displays, you definitely should have long ago eliminated the safety risk of hand firing as much as possible. The last thing the pyro community, and the company, need is for an employee to get injured on the job!

[Mumbles]

Perhaps my first remark is a bit of an over statement. There is a certain rush and personal-ness that comes with handfiring a show, or even watching one. I think handfired shows are excellent. To me, it just makes me feel more in touch with them, verses a big production with music and choreography and all that. Don't get me wrong, it has it's place, but they are becoming waaaaay to common, and lack in quality and preparation needed for a good show.

 

You will notice that I at least said e-firing what can be hand fired..... I am quite aware of safety. I certainly don't want to be hand firing salutes, or 12" shells. Well, maybe just one 12" to see what it's like This is strictly from a shooters point of view. If I owned the display company, or was leading a significant number of displays, I would of course want to go with e-fired. Many devices come from china pre-matched even, which make it even easier. It's much safer to the employees, easier to coordinate, and allows for some very impressive displays.

 

I do have to admit, the one striking advantage to e-fired is that you get to watch your handy work. Setting up an e-fired show, from my experience, is just grunt work for the younger people. I know everyone has to start somewhere, but it seems like many get the impression that they will actually be pushing buttons and what not. Even this is quite a bit rarer. Mostly you hit a button on a computer, and it takes over from there. There are still spotters, and someone watching the computer obviously, but there is much less interaction and control of the fireworks. Quite simply speaking you are there to carry racks, and pound/dig them into the ground.

 

When setting up a handfired show, I think it's just fun. In my experience hand fired shows tend to have more closer proximity effects. Cakes, lance pieces, cannonades, etc. This is probably what helps make it more personal to me. When you don't have to stake down several dozen racks and individually attach the shells to the slats, theres much more time to do other things.

[WarezWally]

Of course hand firing stuff is more fun from a personal view but its not such a good idea in a commercial setting.

 

You want things to go smoothly and to get the show looking perfect, while you can certainly do that with hand firing why would you bother? It has more risk and a higher chance of something going tits up.

 

In this day and age portfires should only be cracked out when your firing box decides to shit itself 10 minutes before the show.

[asilentbob]

That would still suck especially if all your ematches were tied in... that would be a huge mess... and the racks wouldn't necissarily be setup for hand firing if you had them in tight groups... both shows i have worked on so far we had racks of 8 or 10 tubes nailed together with about 5 other of the same kind of rack for stability... that would suck for trying to light shells safely... you couldn't really light the shells in the center without putting some part of the flare or stick over a loaded gun... in such a case it would probably be best to makeshift visco/quickvisco everything to 1-5 fuses or so... but man... in getting that done on about 6 groups of those racks in 10min... fuck that happening in time... especially with your desired rate of fire...

 

Tying in e-match and taking it down are the only things i don't like about electricly fired shows... But now we are getting so many cakes and they are getting pretty good quaility to the point that some companies are using them alone, or them and standard Ti salute chain finales.

[Bert]

But now we are getting so many cakes and they are getting pretty good quaility to the point that some companies are using them alone, or them and standard Ti salute chain finales.

 

Cakes take up a LOT of space and weight in shipping, and a lot more magazine storage space than shells. Any company that relies on them near exclusively will find the trade off for simplicity of set up and reduced crew made up in shipping and storage costs. We use many types of cakes, but they are perhaps 25% of the effects in a typical show, often less if we have the space and budget to use larger than 6" material.

 

Of course, we get a few shows with setup or safety distance constraints such that we use all cakes... Makes for a fast tear down at the end of the night, but you'd better have access to a good sized dumpster or a safe area for a spent cake bonfire.