joker5 Posted July 5, 2006 Posted July 5, 2006 here in tooele utah we had tons of rain and wind. some of the shells lift got wet and that doesnt work very well. we blew up 2 steel 8 inch guns, nice flower pots btw. we had a 12 incher flop out of the gun and break on the ground 100 feet away from our firing board, scary as hell. we also had a 3 inch titanium salute blow in the gun wiping out 3 racks with 10 guns in each rack. very exciting show. it was the scariest 45 minutes of my life. on a dud sweep today i found 2 3inch ti salutes , i went up the hill and dispensed of them with my 22 rifle, cool exploding targets. i hope it does not rain on the 4th for many years to come . i hope everyone elses was better than mine. oh well, until next show.
aquaman Posted July 6, 2006 Posted July 6, 2006 Where I live it rained for the past 2-3 years so I guess it was your turn. Yesterday was dry and cool where I live and it was perfect! I made a dozen roman candles, alot of fountans (for the family/neighbors), a couple rockets, a dozen whistlers, a dozen of my mini crackers, and a couple of my ground blooms. I also had alot of commercial crap from last year (it rained) and I pretty much busy most of the day/night. My neighbor had a couple half sticks and scared the crap out of me. My parents and neighbors thought it was me but it wasn't. over-all probably one of the best 4th of july's in my life. P.S. Where i live most of the crap I do is illegal (firework wise ) and I didn't see one cop!
mr.pyro Posted July 6, 2006 Posted July 6, 2006 Well me and my freinds and gf were watching fireworks fromt he desert hilltop and drinking a little and guess what. a cop pulled up and we all got mips yaay! not, shittiest 4th of my life.
ZoSo357 Posted July 6, 2006 Posted July 6, 2006 Well i'm canadian so if i celebrate the 4th, people give you a weird look May i ask what "mips" are?
Mumbles Posted July 6, 2006 Posted July 6, 2006 Minor in Possession I would imagine. We've always just called them underages. I remember the cops coming to one party specifically. I had been drinking a little, and definatly would have blown something. My friend and I figured if we were getting tickets, we were doing it in style. Long story short, an hour later we have killed half a liter of vodka each and are working our way through a 30 of beast*** when my friend tells us the cops left and we didn't have to worry about it. *** - don't drink beast if you don't have to. Anyway my 4th was excellent. All my shells sucked, but I had some decimators, excalibers, and Phantom Grucci collections so all was not lost. The next day I worked on a professional crew. It was good times. I got to light off some fucking huge ground salutes.
justanotherpyro Posted July 6, 2006 Posted July 6, 2006 Our cities show was the best one they had in years. So that was cool. But when I went to shoot my show it was 20 MPH sustained winds, and dusty. So we had to spend a long time screwing around with distances etc...to shoot the shells off so they would carry a safe distance and go off. The sound on all of my videos went to shit because of the wind, and for some reason the protective piece that goes over the lens opened like 1/4 of the way, so there is only a slit to see anything in half my videos. On a happier note,the shells look beautiful in person, and my glitters looked exactly like the glitters used in the professional show. Nice bonus it was.
PyroJoe Posted July 6, 2006 Posted July 6, 2006 My 4th was ok. Our cities show was awesome as usual. Its right on a river bank and there are over 100,000 people that go to it every year. This year we brought some 8 gram salutes and we were throwing them in the river. They were LOUD. People would scream and guys would wistle whenever they would go off. After the show about 30 people showed up at my house to watch my home made stuff. It all worked great except my first 4 inch shell went up but the fuse did not ignite the contents of the shell and fell to the ground Scary too, because it was glowing on the ground for a while. I only got to light half of my shells though because my ass of a neighbor who lives behind me said if we lit anymore he was calling the cops when THE DAY BEFORE he shot off class B shells for 2 hours straight! What a bastard. He is unemployed and just sits on his porch watching people, so he can yell at them for something or call the cops on somebody. I want to shoot 6 of my 3" salutes over his house at 3 in the morning, see how he likes that.
ULTRABUF Posted July 6, 2006 Posted July 6, 2006 My fourth was not that great. We went to our towns show and Ive always enjoyed it, but now that I know more about fireworks and stuff I wasnt that impressed with it. I lit the stuff that I made last night and none of it really worked that well, I think my lift really sucked, but at least I learned something. Next year will hopefully be way sweeter.
Mumbles Posted July 6, 2006 Posted July 6, 2006 My fourth was not that great. We went to our towns show and Ive always enjoyed it, but now that I know more about fireworks and stuff I wasnt that impressed with it. I lit the stuff that I made last night and none of it really worked that well, I think my lift really sucked, but at least I learned something. Next year will hopefully be way sweeter. Yeah, I've noticed that too. My friends are all like "oh that shell was so cool". I'm like "It had kind of a pancake break, and the green is washed out". I've also developed a great dislike for fireworks to music. Apparantly the WPAG has some amazing thing planned for the PGI with music, so I want to see this. A guy from the club is talking it up.
Frozentech Posted July 6, 2006 Posted July 6, 2006 Went pretty dang good. Shot 2 shows, one for my town on the 3rd, which went flawlessly with only the usual Alaskan irritations of not being dark enough, and after the smoke cleared during breakdown, the mosquitos came out and had me for a midnight snack... no, more like a 5 course feast. On the 4th we shot a nice show in Anchorage, the show went great, but there was some major weirdness just before the show, when the Fire Marshal postponed us 45 minutes due to a stabbing in the audience, and the consequent loss of access control when the Police and EMT units came swarming around. Painter came down and stayed with me a few nights and shot with me, we had a good time overall, and look forward to working together a lot more.
optimus Posted July 6, 2006 Posted July 6, 2006 I've also developed a great dislike for fireworks to music. Apparantly the WPAG has some amazing thing planned for the PGI with music, so I want to see this. A guy from the club is talking it up. Hey Mumbles, I'm intrigued about this comment - would you care to explain how this developed? I guess seeing alot of badly choreographed displays would put me off too. I find that pyromusical shows usually have more care and planning put into choreography, like colour sequences, themes, etc and can sometimes produce a much more interesting, engaging show than straight pyro. However, I think it's very easy to create a really crappy display to music, but extremely difficult indeed to produce an effective one. You should come and see the Shugborough event - Orzella are making their first pyromusical appearance this year. Can't wait - gargantuan salutes and crazy multi-breaks accompanied by sweet tunes - what more could one want?
Rogue Chemist Posted July 7, 2006 Posted July 7, 2006 I am still waiting for a display set to Tschaikovsky's 1812, They would have to do something pretty extreme at the end. That said, I have never heard a good display set to music either. I explored abandoned/condemned buildings with a few buddies on the night of the fourth, the first is the big fireworks day up here, for which I had some commercial stuff, as well as a few homemade things. The rocket with a flash header of a cerium/iodine pentoxide flashpowder being the highlight for me.
Mumbles Posted July 7, 2006 Posted July 7, 2006 The shells and displays are never close enough to the beats of the music to fit. Most of the shows to music I've seen are just playing music while a giant volley of shells are shot up. There is never any real choreography. Rogue, come for a visit around the 4th. The local giant firework spectacal has the 1812 as the last song every year. It sucks though, and frankly I could probably do a better finale to the piece in my backyard. Granted with much anger from the neighbors. Optimus, hook me up with a transatlantic plane ticket and I am there.
d4j0n Posted July 7, 2006 Posted July 7, 2006 I agree with the whole pyromusical deal. I'm a musician myself and I guess that's why it bugs me so much. They can't possibly time the fuses to the exact milisecond and beat, there will always be slight deviation. Unless it's nothing more than a volley of starmines, the break is what's important, and it's rarely perfectly on any particular beat. That and when they DO break on beat, the sound takes time to reach the audience. So if you get the visual on cue, the audio will not be, and vice versa.
ColdWarr2k Posted July 7, 2006 Posted July 7, 2006 It was a boring 4th for me. The lighter side of things is that my new house I moved to theres a golf course a lil ways down and they had a Professional show going and I could see it right from my window so it was a good show. I also didnt burn my hand this year(one year ago that happend now). *shifty eyes* Coldwarr made a appearence. haah ill go post more in random thread(that is if one still exists) just to say hi and greet everyone.
Flashzone Posted July 7, 2006 Posted July 7, 2006 Mine went very well I should say. I have a video i'm editing with some stuff I made, I dont really have any shells or mines just loud stuff. I went and did a test to see if a huge salute would dent some metal. When it went off ( I have it in the video ) it was so damn loud that people looked outside and thought it was a stick of dynamite. The salute fliped over the peice of metal and placed it, so I only checked one side of it. I need to check the other if there is dent. There was a huge college party next door with about 50-100 people, and when I was setting off some loud stuff they would freak out, it was awsome!
hst45 Posted July 7, 2006 Posted July 7, 2006 My 4th ended suddenly, but fortunatly with no charges filed........ I was on vacation in a non-pyro-friendly state in a cottage on a small lake. My neighbor on our right has a kick-ass party and fireworks display every year. He always has $1000 or more worth of commercial stuff from South Carolina. I used to shoot my homemade stuff too, but for the past few years I've let him burn through his yearly pyro budget and saved my stuff for home, where i can shoot all year long with no hassles. At 9:30 he lit the first fuse on a 30-shot cake. Before the last shot, 4 town cops showed up. They know this guy VERY well, not so much for pyro but for a general disregard for the law, and were laying for him. End of show. They didn't search his cottage, they just read him the riot act and gave him the "if you shoot ONE more time" speech. He cooled it, not wanting to screw up his probation. The cops kept cruising by until after midnight.
_DB_ Posted July 7, 2006 Posted July 7, 2006 My Fourth was decent. I just don't get excited about it like I did when I was younger. Shot my first 3 inch shell and some Class C shells and then went for a walk around town. It's cool doing that when fireworks are going off everywhere. The mosquitoes are really terrible here so that kind of limited my walking time. This is off topic but all that talk about fireworks being coregraphied to music made me remember something. Last Christmas I saw a pretty sweet light show coregraphied to some Queen song. They just turn Christmas lights on and off but it was pretty entertaining, with waves and stuff.
PsychoChem Posted July 8, 2006 Posted July 8, 2006 My 4th went great. My friend and I made around 65 3" shells and did a show for his family at his cottage in MI. We also got a lot of great compliments from people around the lake afterwards, its a very pyro friendly area . Anyway I did get a video of it. Not every shell was filmed and I am really pissed that the tiger tails didn't come out on my shitty camera (friend's dad was filming) because they were some of the most beautiful. You can sort of see them in the corner of one shot. Our 10 shell finale was cool though, and we only had 1 low break which was semi dangerous (its in the video) but we built a wall in front of us out of plywood and had the mortars on the other side and we were in a lake so it was fine. Anyway here's the video: BTW: Thats my friends mom yelling in it lol.
BigBang Posted July 8, 2006 Posted July 8, 2006 Fairly nice, I would have to call my fourth. We had atleast $2,000 in commercial pieces, which included firecrackers, cakes, tanks, smokes, and hundreds of small shells. I had made 10-3" shells, 3-3" starmines, a few smokers, 44 "Quarter Sticks", 2-50 gram ETN charges, and then some "Markers" (20 gram salutes.) 3 of the 10 shells were Ti salutes, which were beautiful (and set off many car alarms ) The salutes pleased the crowds (kewl devices some might say, but crowdpleasers none-the-less.) The shells were very nice but a few had bad breaks. The mines were spectaculor, pissing off some of my friends standing downwind. The commercial shells filled the sky for most of the night. I have to say, I agree that what once made made truly awestruck, is starting to wain. I need to start shoot the beach shows, to keep that boyish glee inside. To everyone who has pics or videos of their fourth activities, please post them as I'm going to make a little video. I need some contributions from ya'll since I know how wonderful your works are
Pyrohawk Posted July 9, 2006 Posted July 9, 2006 Well I am now home. My family was on vacation the whole week of the 4th. We were in Myrtle Beach which is a crazy place on the 4th!! The beach was lit up all over with people firing stuff. Also there was a crew firing a pro show right down the beach..... I tried to wa;lk over to it till some guys on 4 wheelers told me to stay back Tonight when we got home I set off my homemade stuff. A few starmines which worked nicely, a 3" spherical shell which worked "ok".....had a kinda weak/unsymetrical break, and also a 1lb rocket with 3" canister header which was a complete failure!! The rocket flew niceley....but then headed back down and hit the ground before exploding. I was overall pretty dissapointed.........
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