Save this to your disk using the "Save As..." command. Then go to your word processing program, and open the file "stories2001.txt" which is now on your hard disk. Set the font and size to whatever is comfortable for you, and print it out on your printer for more comfortable reading "How I Spent My 4th of July" (2001 edition) Written by fireworks lovers around the U. S. A. Compiled by Bob Weaver http://fireworksland. com Thank you to everyone who participated in this. These stories were sent to me by e-mail in July 2001. Each story describes what that person did with fireworks to celebrate Independence Day in the United States, on July 4, 2001. You can print this out on your printer to make reading easier. When I printed it out, with the type set to 10-point Times Roman, it required 27 sheets of paper to print all of it. It is over 32,000 words long. Several of the stories contain language which is not suitable for children. Please do not let children read through this collection of stories. Each person that wrote a part of this owns the copyright to the part they wrote. Feel free to print this out on your printer, for your own reading, but you can't publish it, or distribute copies of it, or put it on any web site or put it on any computer besides your own. Of course, you CAN do anything you want with the part of it that YOU wrote. To avoid possible violation of copyright law, please do not publish, copy, post or transmit this text to anyone else. There is no significance to the order that the stories appear in. The stories appear in completely random order. No editing has been done to the the stories at all, except to remove any names of people unless specifically requested to leave the name in. No attempt has been made to correct any spelling errors or grammatical errors, of which there are many. In some stories you will need to just accept bad spelling and grammar to read a good story. No attempt has been made to verify the accuracy of any statement made in any of these stories. Any statement made is to be considered strictly as the opinion of the author of the statement. Nothing in any of these stories should be necessarily considered an endorsement of any product, service, person, business or organization. Any statement about the quality of a particular product or recommendation of a particular business is the opinion of the person who wrote the statement. Readers are cautioned that fireworks on the commercial market may not necessarily perform the same when purchased the following year, even if the name and number of the item is the same. Some fireworks are manufactured to be consistent in performance from one year to the next. But sadly, the factories do not always make every item exactly the same as they did the previous year. This is common with so-called "overloaded" items, they are often much weaker the following year. Therefore, even if an item is called "great" one year, it may not necessarily perform exactly the same the next year. There may be some techniques described in this document that should only be conducted by professional pyrotechnicians, and that the average person should never attempt to do. Any reader of this material is cautioned that this information is for the entertainment of the reader only, and it does not constitute instructions or directions of any technique or method, either generally or specifically. There is no guarantee that any firework or other device, any technique or any method mentioned in any of these stories will produce the results described in the story. The manufacture, sale, transportation, storage and use of fireworks is inherently hazardous. Readers are cautioned to form their own opinion about any information contained herein, and to exercise caution and judgment when working with any kind of pyrotechnics. In the United States, large firecrackers known commonly as "M-80s" are illegal, as are any firecrackers which contain more than 50 milligrams of pyrotechnic content. Even though these types of firecrackers may be mentioned in the stories below, this does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation that you buy, make or use any such devices. In fact, we recommend that you stay far away from M-80s and any other illegal fireworks, and only buy or use legal fireworks. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this. If you are one of the 57 people wrote one of these stories, I appreciate you taking the time to share your story with other fireworks enthusiasts like yourself. Bob Weaver http://fireworksland. com Here are the stories....... *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* My fourth was pretty good... lets see... First off, about a month before the fourth, I went to my neighbors house to get a two page list of fireworks items, everything you can think off, it was basically the Phantom fireworks collection on two pages of paper. It was great.. I bought just under 200 dollars worth of stuff but if any of you or familiar Phantom has this great deal that everything you buy you get one free.. its the best! Then about 3 days ago my neighbor got a class B list, THAT STUFF IS EXPENSIVE!!! I only bought 2 1 1/2 inch titaniums 5 3 inch shells, assorted colors and spreads. and two HUGE 6 inch shells, both color changing Chrysanthemums with reports and it was just around a hundred and fifty bucks. My neighbor bought a case of 74.. it was like over 500$!!! My Fourth of July celebration started around 2 PM. We had about 6 gross of bottle rockets and 2 brick of firecrackers.. they were fun for the time being but around nine it got real good. I started with the class C items and they were pretty good, Air Defense is a great cake and Wolf Pack has some nice reloadable tubes. Then at about 10 PM my neighbor called me up and told my he had all the mortar tubes in to the ground and was ready... I got the rest of my cakes and all my Class B stuff over to his house... we had like 10 friends grab 2 cakes each and start lighting. Me and him just started throwing shells into the tubes and lighting them... it was awesome after about a half hour the cops came, it is illegal to do anything but sparklers here in CT. This was the funny part of the night.. the cop was walking around and he picked up a huge black garbage bag and threw it in his car, he also knocked over two portable mortars that we had... he told my neighbor that since this wasn't the call he was going to that he would cut him a break and if there were any more he would come back and take him in. So he drove off with our bag of empty boxes and wrappers and all the garbage. We got a good chuckle out of that. So we put all the stuff the cop thought he took in two boxes and drove down to the beach, all of our friends and the people with us went too. We only had like 15 more shells so we hammered one tube into the sand and just laid out the cakes. We had a friend light the cakes and we just started doing shells again.... after about 12 shells we had a major problem!! Two of the shells only blew up about 100 feet above the ground and the last one blew up in the tube! Luckily we saw it just pop out of the tube instead of being launched out so we all scattered and no one got hurt. What was happening was that the pipe was melting from the mortar shells being shot out so fast right after each other. But that was the last mortar so we were all good. Thats my Fourth of July story, its hard to believe that it worked out so good... its almost unbelievable but boy it was great!! *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* July 4th 2001 Hollister Ca. Two hundred people in attendence. Beer, Tri-Tip, Salmon, & Oysters for dinner. Yum! The Fireworks show started at dusk with fountains and some small cakes. Then we would alternate between cakes, fountains, and sky rockets. Roman candles were set at angles sitting in buckets of sand and rock to keep them in place. We had multiple finales fusing a bunch of #400 single shot tubes using quick match. The Grand finale consisted of two 25 shot HDPE 1.75" mortar racks and a 50 shot angled 1.75" HDPE mortar rack hooked up to a Radio Match device with quick match and Visco. The mortar shells that were used in the finle were mixed. Iron Revenger, Double Impact, Trilogy, Rambo Kid, Pyronormal Experience, Tripple Impact, Color shells, Crackling shells, Whistling Buster, and finished it off with Seven Titanium Salute shells. The show lasted about two hours and it was a huge success with no problems at all. In two hours we shot off about thirty cakes, forty rockets, two hundred multi break aerial shells, nine roman candles, eight fountains, & one Fire wheel. Next year it will be even bigger. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* I took about 2 packs of firecrackers, shoved it in a toy alligator and watched its head shoot 10'. I also attached a 3 ounce bottle rocket to a matchbox car. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* This years 4th of July was awesome! The best ever, mainly because of the fireworks I bought and the testing and preparation I did. You said you wanted details, so this is how it went, some details were probably lost, but this is basically how it went: My show prep began in March, when I ordered a TON of fuse! I Love Fuse! I wanted 20 feet but the minimum order was 200 feet, so I was well stocked for the year. My roll of fuse was about as big as a Tire. In April I started planning my order and deciding what to buy based on last years show. I used a huge Excel Spreadsheet to plan my fireworks order. I had made some notes after last years show, like what to buy more of, and what not to buy. I decided not to buy really small stuff because I never have time for it. I also started testing fuse connectors in April. I wanted to find the fastest way to wire fuse without having to slice the ends of each one. I have too many devices to slice each end, and some wiring always gets done on the beach. I tested connecting 2 fuses together with scotch tape, masking tape, plastic connectors, wire connectors, and double-sided foam mounting tape. I knew that I had over 100 things to wire up so I wanted to do it right. The double-sided mounting tape won, in terms of speed and it worked every time. It's easy to use, and the fuses ignited each other perfectly. I also did some fuse testing to see how it was burning in this batch. One Sunday I went to the AskJeeves parking lot near my house and lit a bunch of fuse timing each strand with my stop watch. There was smoke all over the place but no trouble showed up. I had all the times I needed. The fuse was burning a little slower than normal. It was 2. 75 per inch. In May I placed my first firework order for 2001. I ordered 60 Super Rockets most of them were planned for my grand finale. The year before I only had 1, and so this year I wanted to do it right. I also ordered some smaller rockets, but none compare to the super rocket. Next I went to Home Depo to get plastic pipes to hold my Rockets in the sand. (Super Rocket Preparation I call it) I always get 16-18" plastic pipe for sprinkler systems. This year I bought 9 of them, the chick at the counter asked me if I was installing a sprinkler system, yeah right. They stick in the ground or in the sand perfectly, and they are large enough to hold the Super Rockets and all the Interceptors too. Before these pipes I had to buy a bunch of 2 liter bottles of 7-up and dump out 30% of the water. They worked well too but they are actually a hassle, heavy, and more expensive. In late May I did some preliminary testing and timing with Super Rockets. I wired up 5 of them and timed the fuse and wicks. I learned that it worked better to bundle all the fuses together instead of connecting 2 to 2 or 3 to one. I tried a few more times and connecting 5 rockets to 1 fuse lit all 5 every time using the double sided mounting tape. I had some friends with me and we had some beers and turned the test in to more of a party. In early June I ordered the largest shipment I have ever purchased. This shipment had a lot of Multi-shot aerial repeaters in it, which is just what I wanted. It was basically an arsenal! (An arsenal of fun) Last year I found that Multi-shot-aerial repeaters are way easier to use than mortars and work just as well. I got the largest ones available. I ordered the loudest stuff possible, and all the heavy Artillery that I could get. A wide variety of the large stuff is what I focused on. I bought a lot of other stuff as well, but the small stuff was mainly for during the day on the 4th, and for warming up! Almost everything was in stock, so my shipment was in process. I also bought some M-60's from a friend of mine, for some extra fun on the 4th. I could only get 7 this year because they are getting harder and harder to find. In late June I started wiring up pre-show devices in pairs. I wire 2 devices together with a 15" fuse, and then later I can light it about 5 inches from one side. This is one light, for 2 devices, so the show is efficient. 2 devices with one light is perfect for the beginning of the show, and it's low maintenance and they are easy to pack and carry and light. I bought more duffel bags to separate phases of my show. This way I can carry duffels down the cliffs at Santa Cruz with 10 multi-shot aerial repeaters at a time. Each Duffel bag contains a phase of the show, and some duffels have 10 rockets in them. This way the most the cops will ever get will be 1 bag or 10 multi shot aerial repeaters. I would be happy to give 1 bag to the cops, because I could move to a new location and continue the show! In early July I created 2 super lighters that are wind proof. Every 4th of July since I could remember I got blisters in my thumbs from using BIC lighters. I also remember the giant lighters you can buy for lighting briquettes, fireplaces or Barbeques, those work well when there is no wind, but if it's windy like at the beach it's difficult. So, I build custom wind-proof lighters. I buy bottled water bottles in the 1 liter size, 2 or 3 of them. I buy those large red or green lighters that are for Fireplaces. Then I cut the bottom 2" off the end of the clear plastic bottled water bottles. Then I put the end of the lighter into the opening you drink out of and duct tape it up so that the lighter is taped with the end sticking into the Large Plastic water bottle. Then I trim around the plastic bottle so the end is about 1" from the end of the lighter. This allows you to light any wick longer than 1" even with an insane wind blowing. I use them on the beach and they always work. Sometimes parts of the plastic get hot and bend a little, but they don't really melt or cause trouble when it's windy on the beach. On July 2nd I started wiring up different devices, for the main part of my show. This is where I usually always wire more than 2 devices together. Here is an example, I would group 7-8 multi shot aerial repeaters together and cut 7 fuses each one 12" longer than the rest. This causes each device to go off 30 seconds after the last one begins. With the average time of 38 seconds, this works great. I did a few different phases of the show like this. 12" between each multi-shot aerial repeater is usually good timing with some overlap sometimes. I give it extra length for the Rata-Tat Tat's, they seem to last forever. I wire up the grand finale differently. For this I use fuses that get closer and closer together, so that the timing is closer with each device. It starts out with 12" between each multi-shot aerial repeater but then ends up to be 4". The last 3-4 heavy Artillery devices go off at the same time, last, as a bunch of super Rockets go off at the same time. For the rockets, the fuse is cut and attached in advance. The early rocket rounds use fuse that has a 1-2 inch variance. All 9 fuses are different lengths, but all very close to 20" long. This means that all the rockets go off at different times, all within 4 seconds of each other. For these rounds of 9, the rockets are small to medium sized, and don't usually include the "Super" Rocket. At show time I insert 9 pipes in the sand, and then I load 9 rockets in, and light 1 bundle of wicks taped up with the double stick foam mounting tape. Next I cut all the fuse for the Grand Finale rockets. For the Grand Finale rounds all the fuses are exactly 20 inches long, so that all the rockets will go off at the same time, or within 1 second of each other. I need a lot of grand finale super rocket rounds, so I need to cut a lot of fuse. My fuse cutting session takes awhile, but it's still fun. The last step is to wire the rest of the rockets and any other last minute devices that need to be lit in tandem. On July 3rd I checked that I had all the rockets and other devices all loaded up. I had extra fuse, custom lighters, and extra lighters just in case, and I had all the devices arranged in sections (Phases or rounds). I make sure the first 2 duffel bags are loaded up with the small sized devices. The main part of the show takes 3-4 large duffel bags because there are about 30 multi-shot aerial repeaters plus rockets. The grand finale devices don't even all fit in duffel bags, so they are usually carried down last or 1-2 can fit into the giant duffels that I use each year. On July 3rd, at night, we decided to do some testing on a beach in Santa Cruz where there were bonfires and teenagers partying. We brought out 1 duffel bad of stuff and started shooting things off. I lit some sunlight of floridas, some single shot devices, a few fountains and those small whistling rockets. I was basically testing some things, and timing some fuse. I did a Rat-a-TatTat wired to another large fountain, and some smaller rockets by themselves. I also lit a few 25 shot multi-shot aerial repeaters. There were a bunch of partiers around by all the fires and people were cheering. They had never seen fireworks so massive. I lit some medium sized rockets and a larger multi-shot-aerial repeater and they were totally yelling and cheering. It was classic. People were on their balconies and porches at all the nearby houses and condo's. This was a giant beach all wide open and I was lighting everything off at an angle over the water, so it was safe. After about 10 devices the cops showed up, and they had all their lights on. I ran across the beach with the rest of the fireworks and stashed them by some rocks and we took off. We had a cooler, chairs, towels and all sorts of stuff, so we looked like total tourists. By the time we got out to our SUV there were 4 cops there, all with their lights on. It was a good thing they didn't know I had about 6 duffel bags of stuff in my car just 20 feet away. We took off, and about 15 min. later I went over and got the duffel that I had stashed on the rocks. People were asking me if I was going to come back on the 4th of July, they loved the show. On July 4th we went out and tested some more small things about 4PM at a different beach. We brought M-45 tanks, Electronic Bombs, small rockets, ground bloom flowers, BlackCat firecrackers, and some single shot multi-shot aerial repeaters. They were fun. I found out that Tanks don't work on the sand, and nether do ground bloom flowers and other spinners. Everyone out there on the beach loved everything. I was lighting the Thunderous King Single Tube one shot aerials the most. People were totally into it and yelling and clapping when we lit off an impressive item. The kids loved the firecrackers. I had wired 2 and 3 Electronic bombs together, and that was fun. When I would get out a string of 100 they were so amazed. It was fun, we tested some things and lit stuff for about an hour. Then we had a pre-show at about 8PM where we lit off some 1 shot devices, some things called The Bomb, and some small fountains. This time we brought more firepower. I was lighting devices that were wired together with fuse, so we were getting 2 shots at once from the single shot multi-shot-aerial repeaters. The Air Color Bombs were the best, but they tip over easy in the sand. I wired several together and that was cool. I lit a lot of 200 BlastCracker firecracker strings and some of the spinners that take off and fly off into the air. I found that the spinners that fly up into the air (Magic Crystals & Moon Landers) work in semi-wet flat sand. Everyone loved those flying spinning devices. I lit 1 multi-shot aerial repeater and people on the cliffs were clapping and cheering like crazy. Everyone wanted me to keep going, but it wasn't even fully dark yet, so we went back to Pyro base camp to get ready for the big show. Around 9pm we started the show on the beach closest to our house. This beach is not accessible to those Santa Cruz beach cops that have Cherokees. This is the beach by 21st Street. Around the corner they call it Beach 2-5. There were small fireworks going off everywhere and there is no way for the cops to get to it easily, even on foot because of all the private homes everywhere. Small rockets were exploding from 100 yards away on both sides of us. There were people all over the cliffs watching all the smaller firework shows. It was perfect. I brought down 2 duffel bags of stuff, and kept more duffel bags up on top of the cliff near our house. I started with small to medium sized stuff, rockets and fountains. I was lighting off 9 rockets at the same time, all Tulip size and up to the next size. There were a few Space Interceptors, Artillery Sticks, and Whistling moon travelers, all wired up but set to go off a few seconds apart. They were awesome! All were pre wired so it was easy to set them all off, and fun to watch them all. And with only 1 light for 9 explosions, it was low maintenance. I lit the Jubilee, Pot of Gold and the Symphony fountains, and they all worked great. Then I started lighting off 200 firecracker strips as I was lighting off 2 and 4 multi-shot aerial repeaters at the same time. This gives the crowd something to look at while the wicks get going and reach device #1. I tried the 25 shot multi-shot-aerial repeaters and some of the other versions as well. The device called the 4th of July Spectacular was awesome, and so was the Battle of Colors and the Crashing Rainbow device. Every once in awhile 2 would be going at once and it added to the excitement. It seemed like every time the crowd cheered and yelled another device started up. I did several more rounds of 9 rockets, these were all medium sized, and there were always 2-3 super rockets mixed in. They went so high and the break was gigantic and symmetrical, just like at Disneyland or something like that. This phase of the show took about an hour. The wiring allowed me to kick back every once in awhile and just watch the show. It was cool. I had to get more duffel bags at one point, but there were so many other fireworks going off all over the place that people in the area had stuff to watch. Then I lit some of the medium sized multi-shot-aerial repeaters, all wired together, and some giant fountains. I don't remember all the names because I had almost 2 of everything. I wired the flower of thunder and the Air Raid devices together, so that the 2nd would go off 35 seconds after the first. Wiring in advance was critical for my show, and it worked great. The larger devices were awesome, they went up higher and exploded louder. The Saturn Missile Battery was incredible, next year I'm going to light 2 off at the same time. It ignites 156 separate missiles that fly into the air! It was impressive, everyone on the cliffs and all around were cheering and clapping. About every other set I lit rockets, 9 at a time. I had pre-wired several rounds of 9 rockets where 3 rockets would go off at the exact same time. Sometimes I tilted the plastic pipes just right so that the breaks were perfectly positioned for this. The fuse was exactly the same length for this effect. Ideally, I should get a time spec for each multiShot Aerial repeater, and as the last shot fires the next device lights up! That's a major challenge, so my rough estimates seem to work fine, plus some random overlap looks cool sometimes. Almost all the fireworks worked, when one didn't work it was usually that the fuse didn't light all the way or that the connector fell off and so I just re-lit it and watched that one go! One bad thing happened, I was out in the sand connecting one final wire and everyone started yelling lookout, and before I could light the fuse the water which had been moving up on the beach crept up and soaked my shoes and 4 medium sized multi-shot aerial repeaters. I was pissed, but It wasn't going to affect the show because I still had a ton of firepower left. I saved these devices but I don't' know if they will work. Because of the red plastic paper over the top, they didn't get as wet as I thought. We were amazed that there were no cops were there, but I guess they were too busy. There were explosions going off up and down the beach. I bet I heard 100 M-80's that night. There were a few mortars and shells going off up and down the beach as well, so I probably blended right in, until the grand Finale - At about 11:00pm I brought down several duffel bags for the Grand Finale Fireworks. These consisted of 27 super rockets, an 8, 000 firecracker roll, and about 12 giant Multi-Shot Aerial repeaters. The heavy artillery devices were wired up to go off in sequence and then 3 additional devices were to go off at the same time. I did this with all the pre-cut wicks of different length, all pre attached to each device with the double stick foam picture hanging tape. One phase I remember had the Heart Stopper, the New Era Celebration, The Mojo, desperate attempt, and the Blond Joke device. When these all go off in a 2 minute interval, it's a wild show that would amaze anyone, and as soon as they are over 9 super rockets lift-off within 1 second, so the sky is full of giant breaks in every location possible. It was perfect. The 8, 000 firecrackers took a long time to go off, even thought I doubled them up and bunched them up in 5 spots. Next year I might cut the 8, 000 in 1/2 and light it 2 different times, because it was distracting at one point when a 50 shot thunder king was going off. Towards the end I was setting off a ton of stuff at the same time, and I didn't have time to watch some of the show, but I know it was awesome because I saw some of it and everyone told me. The Pyro Glyphic, Sky Travel Barrade, and Master of Orion look great if you get them to light about 15 seconds apart, with good overlap. I lit off 9 more Super Rockets as several heavy artillery multi-shot aerial repeaters went off. It was the perfect grand finale that ended with 9 final Super Rockets that exploded at the same time and 4 heavy artillery multi-shot-aerial repeaters including the Marooned, Flower Power, and the Gangsta Blast. For the final 9 super rockets I tilted a few of the plastic tubes down more and they exploded closer to the water making it look like a sunset in a pyrotechnic kind of way. It was an awesome night, and there isn't too much I'll change for next year, except to stay further away from the water as the tide comes in, and order more of the Saturn Missile Battery devices. I will always try to get larger rockets if they become available, and I'll always try to get the largest Multi-shot aerial repeaters I can find!! I'd like about 10 of the Heavy artillery Multi-Shot Aerial repeaters for the grand finale next year. When someone makes a SUPER SUPER Rocket I think I'll take 60!! I'm also going to buy 30 of the plastic pipes for launching more rockets at the same time! My wife calls me the pyro, but for me this is just part of life - *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* It started on 6/28 when I went to the firework stands. I bought about 60 bucks worth of safe and sane stuff. (the BORING stuff) I also had a real thunderking, tulip rockets, a few super rockets, an air raid, a box of bad boy shells, and my favorite, salute shells. Oh and about 3, 000 firecrackers. my family started off with safe and sane fireworks. I did a few packs of firecrackers once it started to get dark. about te minutes later I did two salute shells which were so powerful they made all the lights in the house flicker. A friend of ours thought it was an earthquake. we then did a few tulip rockets, they were really nice. my dad then decided to do a super rocket. It was wat louder than expected. It had a kick ass break too. then we went to the school next to us and set u a thunderking with a minute and a half fuse extension. we went back home and waited. suddenly a bunch of green pearls went up to the sky then ended in VERY heavy reports. a few people who were driving on our country road street stopped to watch it. Its was awsome. the air raid was just like a thunderking but not as loud. The bad boy shells were great they had nice breaks. we ended the night with fountains an a couple of 200 strings of black cats tied together... it was a great 4th hope you hade fun too *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* Hello- Well, it all started like this. I wasn't even supposed to have a show this year. I live in MI, where fireworks that shoot up in the air or blow up are illegal. I always have stuff left from the last fourth of july. This year I had tons of shells left (such as airhawk shells, super kids, double impact, and triple impact shells) They came over around 9:00 we started to so some firecrackers first since those aren't really pretty. We did a chain of 2, 700 Celebration Crackers Approx. Half broke, and went lose all over the street (my house is first house on the block, the road is to the left of us) As the night got darker we did some shells, some of theirs and some of ours. The night was going ok. Then out of no where the 5-0 (cops) show up. All my friends ran, my dad was outside and he ran too. Only one of my friends went up to the car. He said, I don't usually bust people since it's the fourth and everyone does fireworks but we got a complaint. My whole family thought it was the old man thats mean across the street. So my friends and I left, we drove to house that my sister was at. As we pulled in there was 100's of cars all over the side streets. This subdivision is very wealthy all houses were mansions, I heard loud bangs. I could only think it was m-80's. I heard people saying these guys have 20, 000 dollars worth of fireworks. I looked in their garage and they have 100's of boxes filled with fireworks and 5-6 boxes with m-80's and quarter sticks of dynomite. They were contiuasely throwing these m-80's and sticks of dynomite on the ground, I think I still hear ringing in my ears. Someone called the cops on these people too. Their was vans filled with cops like busting these guys so we decided to leave. It was a crazy night. But cool in the end since I never really heard quarter sticks of dinomite. They rock your stomach. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* This year I spent my 4th of July at a friend's house. They were so paranoid about possible messes on their backyard cement pool deck or wood deck that the only thing I could think of that they wouldn't have a fit over were sparklers. Starting at sundown we heard fireworks going off around the neighboorhood, peaking around 9 pm with some BIG BOOMs. We discovered the sparklers the next morning, still sitting on the table, unused. The pyro quotent was nonexistant at this party. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* My family and friends had a great fourth of July. I live in Carson, CA where fireworks are legal for use and purchase (only the safe and sane are allowed by CA law). Though firecrackers, shells, and aerial devices were not permitted, there seemed to be more illegal fireworks being set off the legal kinds. But anyways, at about 800pm, then the mood of the city began to liven up. Mortar shells began to light up every corner of the city. I went on my godparent's roof to look at the aerial view of the city and it was definitely spectacular. The whole sky was lit with tremendous amounts of fireworks from rockets, shells, and roman candles. In the distance, there were also two local fireworks shows there were happening and that amplified the excitement in our family. There were 3 different fireworks items that were of great interest to me this year. The first one were artilery shells named Towering Inferno. This shell assortment had 6 different effects and my favorite effect was the willow shell which depicted almost like a rain of fire coming from the sky. The second item of interest to me was an aerial repeater known as the Rocky Mountain High made by Brothers Pyrotechnics. It was a 16 shot repeater that had comet tails to multi color bouquets. Last but not least, this particular item is classified as a safe and sane multi effect fountain for the state of California. The Apache Firedance was coloful, had lots of crackling noises, and has one of the longest burning times. Its burn time lasted 3mins and 30 seconds. It was definitely worth the money...... This year alone, our family spent about $300 on fireworks and we can't wait for the next 2002 fireworks season..... *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* We had a great 4th, A big reason why it was so nice was because we didn't get busted by the cops this year, I live in Illinois by the way. This year we had to go to Indiana to get all of are fireworks. Normally we would travel to Tennessee to get them but we couldn't get the time to go. We spent over a $1000 split between myself and 3 of my friends who are pyros like me. This year we went to my friends new house which is basically out in the middle of no where which was perfect because we did not get hassled by the cops. The party started at 3:00pm we had it on the 3rd since everyone had the 4th off from work. During the day time hours we just lit off bottle rockets and firecrackers no big deal just something to pass the time but it was still fun lighting off even small stuff like that, plus a couple of our friends were able to get a hold of some quarter, and half sticks which are always cool to hear go off. I found something new this year that I had never personally seen sold called Terminator rockets basically they are M-80's on a stick, and they were the start of our show. We used conduit that a friend got from work and cut enough pieces to hold 50 of the rockets which we sent up at the same time using electric matches and one switch that was really cool. The show basically consisted of mostly various types of artillery shells, that included brands like Black Cat, Dragon, and one of my favorites Brothers Brand. We also got some high powered shells called Excalibur those pack a pretty good punch. All of the fireworks were mostly lit off one by one the traditional way with regular lighters and punks to make the show last for a while. To add some variety we lit up some fountains but not a whole lot of them since we really like the aerial stuff the best. We also purchased large finale kits of the repeater cakes and mines and would light off 10 at a time as little mini finales during the show to keep everyone in suspense no one knew if we were done or not which got big laughs out of everybody at the party. Then it came, are big surprise for everyone which was the finale we took multiple artillery shells that included the triple break shells I believe they are called Merlin shells, and double break shells by brothers brand, and an assortment of other shells, and 10, 100 shot Roman candles. We had a total of 100 shells and the 10, 100 shot Roman candles, we worked on this for a long time a couple of friends of mine one who is an electrician which helped out greatly took pieces of ply wood and screwed the tubes down onto them then used electric matches I believe that's what there called and hooked them up to the tubes just like we did with the terminator rockets but instead of sending everything up at the exact same time, this time we hooked all the tubes up to there own switch by making a little command center so to speak which we had a 100 individual switches on and one switch to light the 10, 100 shot Roman candles at the sametime, and basically I just went down the board hitting the switches one after another as fast as I could. I could not believe the excitement in the air everyone was cheering in amazement and of course by that time everyone was pretty lit up on there own from the beer drinking all day. We have never done anything like that before, and now that it is over and we had an awesome time with no cops involved luckily, we are looking forward to next year except the one thing we forgot about is now people are going to look to us to top what we did this year, hopefully we will pull it off again, but we will have to go to Tennessee, becuase Indiana is really expensive we could have gotten 2 - 3 times as much for the same price but oh well it was still a good time. Happy 4th of July Everyone. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* Our 4th of July was very rainy, here in new york. We lit off a few repeater cakes, and a bunch of bottle rockets and about 10 mortars. The best part I thought was when we lit off the roll of 2000 blackcat firecrackers, It lasted for a while and once it got goin it was awesome, im looking to buy the roll of 16, 000 sometime in the future. Everything we lit off was Blackcat. We still have a ton of fireworks left since we were getting wet and we didn't want to waste all the fireworks on a rainy night. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* I signed up with a local fireworks company and became a paid apprentice. I helped load class B fireworks, wire them, hammer cleats so that the mortar racks did not tip over[obviously]. It was a lot of hard work in the sun and long hours but it was all in the name of love for fireworks. That was on the 2nd for a display on the 3rd and the 4th was simply a matter of reloading the mortars. These displays were electrically ignited by a licensee. The preceding Friday, I helped light a "handfire" show with flares. What a rush and possibly dangerous as these shells can [not often] explode in their mortars. Great exposure and a lot of hard work ahead if I want to get licensed. Not for the faint of heart! *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* My 4th wasnt as exciting as id hoped it would be, but on the bright side I still got to set off fireworks. See, I live in Rochester, ny which really isnt cool, besides the fact that we have a high crime rate and tax and gas prices are insanely high, we also have a law against ALL fireworks except for cap guns and road flares. We cant even have sparklers if we wanted to. Which is really a bummer because I love fireworks with a passion, it is my favorite hobby. Which means if I ever want to excercize my hobby, I risk going to jail. But fortunately, on the 4th of July.. "my favorite day of the year" there are so many people setting off illegal fireworks all around the city that it would be way too much work for the police to hassle every one so they pretty much dont bother you unless they have to.. like if someone were playing with m-80s or causing a major disturbance or something like that. So, last summer I took a little drive down to PA to my favorite little fireworks store which I wont name but many of you who live in the area know about and I stocked up on some nice fireworks.. which was great because I only had to spend about $250 and I had a shopping cart full of fireworks. this particular store has the best prices id seen any where. bottle rockets are only $2.50 a gross.. thunderbomb brand firecrackers are only $5.00 a brick and so on. So, I had all these fireworks sitting in my closet for about a year and id been itching to use them. well.. I finally got too.. myself and a bunch of buddies went to a local lake where they have a fireworks show and almost everyone there is setting off their own.. so we went there ans set off a ton of firecrackers and bottle rockets.. we used "black cats, thunderbombs, thunder of orion, uncle sams, boomers, moon travellers, whistling and 3 whistling moon travellers, air travel, smart bomb, black bear, raging thunder".. and that was just to name some of the bottle rockets and firecrackers we used.. we also had 20 ball magical roman candles" my favorite" 5 sound flowers, halleys comet, garden in spring, toot n twirl, desert at night, saturn missiles... and some small fountains and tubes like cuckoo, and thunder king. we had a great time safely and didnt have any problems at all.. I wish id video taped it.. well, I will next year.. im saving some cash to go back down to PA next month.. im gonna get bigger and better things next year.. well.. that was my 4th thanx for letting me share. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* Even though it poured rain most of the day here in New Jersey, this year's 4th of July was one of my all-time favorites. In May, I traveled down I-95 to South Carolina to stock up. I spent a few hundred dollars on some large shells (chrysanthemums, etc), a ton of roman candles, firecrackers (dixie dynamite, black cats, thunderbombs, M-80 brand, Ash Can brand, etc), some sparklers, some bottle rockets/texas rockets, and crackle bombs (Great Grizzly ones). A few days before the holiday, we headed up to Seabrook, New Hampshire for some more goodies. They only permit certain fireworks in NH so the selection is a limited. I got a ton of repeater cakes and some small ground stuff (Ground Bloom Flowers, smoke bombs, fountains, and helicopters). Early on the 4th, I ran over to Kmart for some road flares to finish it off. Unfortunately, it rained all day, with scattered T-Storms and wind. The weather has never stopped me, but it did stop some of the professional displays in the area (suckers). My town's display went on as scheduled at 9:30 or so. After watching that and playing with some poppers and spinners in the driveway, we drove over to the beach at around 11:30 PM. It was mostly deserted because of the wind and rain, but there was a group of nice people celebrating with a little liquor (no, it was a lot of liquor). We set up and started shooting, hoping the cops would leave us alone (they had already been there twice that night for alcohol and fireworks). Four people on the beach holding ammo boxes would be busted pretty quickly if they did come. We saw a state PD chopper go up the coast with a searchlight right before we got there (I hope they didn't waste a chopper looking for fireworks offendors). The wind played havoc with the lighters, but the road flares worked perfectly. Everything went beautifully, and the people drinking cheered us on. The rockets were awesome. We set up a lot of roman candles to shoot one after another, and then had some firecrackers in the background. Those fake "ash can" firecrackers and M-90's are garbage, aside from being waterproof. We got soaked, and the wind gave us a challenge, but I had so much fun that it didn't bother me at all. I hope the rain didn't spoil anyone else's plans. There were no accidents or injuries, and it was very safe on the sand near the water. We didn't bother anyone, and had a great time. All of us cleaned up afterwords, and stopped the noise before it got too late. But, even so, we did have to worry about the police the whole time... Sometimes I wonder how they consider this a free country, where people are arrested for not harming anyone or anyone's property. How dare the government say I can't celebrate my country's birthday. Everyone vote Libertarian and these problems will go away (all victimless crimes would be legalized - like the safe and responsible use of fireworks). Hope everyone else had as much fun as I did, and HAPPY SHOOTING!!! *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* I'm sorry not enough money this year for ANYTHING. we (my family) watched the nieghbours but not the same. I WILL BE BACK NEXT YEAR.... keep me tuned in PLEASE.. sorry about the disapointment... *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* hi everything here is ready to go truck arived yesterday with the pro shells and mortors and elitricle fireing system fire one tomorow we program the music and cues into the fire one system then on tuesday we start the setup for the show I have 13 pepole helping with this show and it shouldent take a long time to set it up last night I atended a fireworks display down into arkansaw it was great before sundown I got to take a pek at how its set up and done very nicely done and the finaly was great im loking forward to july 4th and today we wil servey the firering site so we can make sure its clear of any debree and tomorow at dawn the truck will arive and setup will begin after the program is loged into the fire one system we have extra shells so on july 3rd we wil run a test during the daylight time to makesure al wiering is done corectly then fire off the 25 extra shells one by one to see how high up they get and also test the location for the sound level for safety weather forcast looks good but rain is poss during the week we have already set up a big tent just incase and im excited caws this wil be my secont big show last year I had more sponcers so im cool with what I got a 25 minute program with both pro and class c stuff and a thunderouse finaly this one will be with alot of salutes and small and medium shells decorating the night sky. it was great everything went as planed we had one close cal though on july 4th we had a strong storm move threw and knocked out our power and also trees and a few houses sufferd lightning damage no one was ingerd in the area but the videomans son was hurt in a car acedent a few miles down the road sufferd a broken arm and cuts after his arm wentthrew the drivers side window the fireworks display was excelent and everything worked as planed. therireworks display went very well despite a near weather catastrafy earlyer on july 4th around 5 pm lightning hit a tree near the finaly area the tree fell over and knocked over a few racks witch were quickly reset and luckaly no damage done I did a long verson of the events and an text scren came up saying it was saved in a text format sence I cant find the darn thing im going to try again and majke it shorter so here we go july secont set up day everything went smooth and all items were deliverd on time we started to gett he mortors out and got them in order and ready for loading and wiering july 3rd we gott he shells out wired them and loaded them into the tubes and coverd them with plastic wrap and foil wrap after wiering we did a test al lights were green and then the fire one system was programed for the show after night fall we set of the 25 extra shells to the end of the 1812 overture it was great july 4th we set up the grounds for the dinner party then at 5 pm boom lightrning hit a tree 30 fet away from the finaly area it knocked over 2 racks but no damage done at 7 pm the dinner was served at 9 pm we did a last check all was go me and 12 other pepole set of on cues the clas c stuff at 920 pm the lights dimed and the countdown began songs were as follows there coming to america america the beautifull freedom the national athem god bless the usa god bless america and ended with stars and stripes forever it was quite a show next upwhiteny huston verson of the national athem we used fountains strobe pods pinwhells and lage class c items as the part and the rockets red glare came a large batel sene was light and it was very neet as candels flairs shells small and medium report shells and lots of loud crackel filled the air and for the end of that gold silver strobing glittering shells and a nice volly of small to medium shells ending with 5 very loud salutes and a huge red white and blue peony light up the sky next came lee greenwoods god bless the usa this part we used a combination of both small and medium c and b shells fountains large sparkalers 120 in all were lit at the end and they changed color 5 times and a volly of crackeling and palm shells and willows followed by one huge chysamthemum shels withg litter and salutes very impressive then God bles america started and we let it all hang out this part had the most fireworks in it and we made it look ands ound like the grand finaly to fool every one and to make them think it was over. thjen we on purpose had a 20 secont delay then the stars and stripes began and we waited to the final part of the song then the pyro flag was light then the sky was filled with shells and it was neet then the 5 huge salute barge boxeswere lit and it was caped of by 25 double bubble shells and one gigantic peony followed by a giant willow shell the end ;] *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* it all started when we were looking for fireworks in a field so then we found a reapeater still good and never lit. We took it to my friends back yard and put it on the grass (we didnt know anything about fireworks) we lit it and it tiped and aimed towards me! I got lucky and a ball went right past my leg!!! *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* part 1. I started buying fireworks as soon as the stands opened up in north carolina. Ofcourse they only sell fountains and stuff so I had some fireworks saved from my previous trip to South carolina which included firecrackers and roman candles and helicopters. I decided to make a three inch starmine and mortar. I made the mortar tube out of that reynolds wrap tube which is very sturdy, however it didn't prove sturdy enough when it came to the powder I was using. I was being really stupid and wanted to attain maximum height for the stars so ofcourse I used a powerful lift charge called "concussion" fast flash powder. I also made some salutes with the powder " I wouldn't advise doing this if you don't have much knowledge about the chemistry of flash powder" These salutes could be compared to the famed M-80. No " I don't make bombs or want to hurt people" these are strictly for entertainment and show. A bright flash and bang always thrills the onlookers. I have enough land so I can do this stuff safely. The largest of the salutes shook the ground and created a powerful shockwave. The light it produced lit the horizon. Now on to how the day started off now that you know what to look forward to. I started out with the fireworks at about 7, but not the big show just small fireworks bc I had heard other people shooting off their fireworks and I just had to join in. Our town has a lot of land so the houses are far enough apart and people bring big fireworks from south carolina. Right now I can hear people shooting off the last of their reloadable shells "the explosion then the crackle effect" On the 4th you could hear echos all around and the air was filled with smoke. I believe I started off just playing with firecrackers and novelty items. I had tried to make a couple small fountains some worked but others were wild and dangerous and threw flashing stars in all directions about 15 feet high and 15 feet toward me! As you can tell I am just starting out, but I have loved doing commercial fireworks since I was about 2 I think is when I saw my first firework then I collected other peoples wrappers the next day and by the time I was 8 I was looking at the wrappers and trying to buy the same thing the next year to see what it did. I think I have done almost all commercial fireworks except some of the huge cakes that are new. After the firecrackers I began the big stuff. I released an arsenal of roman candles and aerial cakes and shells. To make a long story short everything was great that I bought from the store then I decided to take out my homemade starmine which I thought would be cool. I loaded the first star pack into the mortar. I lit the 10 inch fuse and got about30 feet back to admire the stars. Well instead of stars shooting up. I saw a huge explosion and stars comming at me luckily I covered myself in time while watching the shredded mortar tube fly 15 feet over my head "this is no lie" Anyway the stars shot about 50 feet in most directions and luckily fizzled out. I think the explosion put most of them out only a few got lit lucky for me. My shirt caught fire a bit but I wasn't hurt. Lesson learned never use fast flash powder for a lift charge in a starmine. Even with just light stars over the powder it will explode violently. I had no more mortar for the rest of my stars or atleast no mortar that was measured for the stars sizes. So I decided to call it a day, but before I went in I made sure I went out with an even bigger bang. I took at the homemade rocket loaded with a flash powder payload " I mean loaded" It was big. I lit it and after I saw it perform I decided to call it the lighting and thunder rocket. It went so high in the sky I didn't think I would see the flash explosion but I was way wrong. I saw the bright light first that lit the whole horizon and lit the forest in the distance quite nicely and about half a second later the concussion report hit and it could compete with any thunder clap I have heard. I was satisfied and looking forward to next year where I would have more rockets like this " Ofcourse safety comes first and the flash powder starmine won't be a part of the show. Thats it folks looking forwrd to next year hope youenjoyed the story *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* My fourth of July............ I live in New Jersey where there are the worst fireworks laws. Every 4th of July I go to a relatives house for a barbecue where they have a huge yard and nobody would ever call the cops on us. This year I spent 20 dollars on fireworks to add to my huge box of them. On July 3rd, I went to see the biggest proffesional show in NJ, but I like doing my own fireworks better. We started off the 4th by trying one of those happy lamp fireworks. We tied it to a tree and someone lit it, all it did was spin for about 5 seconds and shoot the smallest sparks ive ever seen, it never opened into a lamp like its supposed to. I had about 5 of those bomber planes and right after the happy lamp, we lit a bomber plane. The person who lit it, lit it in his hand and threw it. It landed on the ground upside down and blew up. I brought a whole bag full of snap pops, sparklers, and party poppers. I gave them to the really little kids and they got a kick out of them. I took a break from fireworks to eat but started up again because a 3 year old was begging me to do more fireworks. I lit some moon traveler bottle rockets. We tried to find to find a tube but all we could use was a beer bottle. After that my father took out a Large Night Siren fountain and lit it. It whistled in the begining, then it turned to loud crackles. After that, I did a black cat smoke bomb, because the little kids like to run threw the smoke. I also had some novety trucks and stuff. I lit a black cat truckload of fireworks which was neat and a tank which wasnt good. I also did 3 of those bee things. 1 didnt work but the other 2 did. I had a box of 72 crackling balls (got it for only 4.95) and I lit some of those. It is really cool when the little balls shoot up in the air and explode. They were pretty good. Then, I took out my box of 6 parachutes (got it for 1.99). I had never seen a parachute firework before. After I lit it, it made a firecracker like bang and before I could see it, a ball was up in the air and made a bang and a parachute came down. A lot of the kids ad a great time chasing after the parachute. I used 4 of those parachutes. I wasnt able to do many more fireworks because it poured and then started to thunder. Just before the thunder, about 5 people including me went all the way down to a creek in the backyard which was pretty hard because the trail is all overgrown. We took some m-60's, m-90's, a smoke bomb, a crackling ball, and a black cat speed boat. First we tried to do m-90's (they had waterproof wicks) but they didnt work. Then I tried a black cat smoke bomb which ive seen in the water before, that didnt work etither. We were all disapointed that they werent working. I then tried an m-60 that I had left over from a while ago. I was watching it float down the creek, expecting it not to work then, BOOOOM!. It was the loudest m-60 I have ever heard. Even on ground they arent that loud. We were getting ready to walk back to the house when I put a Black cat speed boat in. It moved forward while shooting sparks then it made whistles and I dont think the camelia flower on the back worked. The boat made so much smoke that I could barely see. Then it was getting to be bad weather so I quickly did some more sparklers for the little kids and before I got in my car to leave I did one last crackling ball. I wasnt at my relatives until it was dark so it wasnt so great. Those little disco flash/nitro flash things are pretty neat at night and I wish I couldve done those and some good fountains for everyone to watch.. Once I got home, there werent many fireworks I could do because I have already gotten in trouble with fireworks in my town and they know I have them. So all I could do is snap pops, and sparklers, which isnt worth the energy because they are boring. I am going to spend about 100 dollars on good stuff for next 4th. I am going to drive to Florida and stop on the way back and also to PA about 2-3 times. I hope you all had the best 4th. All of you who live in areas where fireworks are legal are so lucky. Next year I will have a better story next year. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* Sorry I didn't write to you sooner. Computer was busted. Anyways my fourth totally kicked Guiliani's ass!!! I had lots of fireworks, many that I brought from a kid I know, and many others. I wasn't the only one shooting fireworks though! The entire Island (Staten Island) was on fire! There were fireworks goin' off everywhere! I shot off everything colorful, and guess what? I got it ALL on tape! Here is the story: I wake up at 9:00AM in the morning, with a throbing headache. My thoughts for the fourth are pretty bleack. I thought that the cops will win, and that our fourth will blow once again. Boy was I wrong. I went on my computer for a few hours and checked the weather, once again, my hopes were diminshed; it looked like there was gonna be a shitload of rain, so I sorta slumped in my shair and said something like "Son of a... bitch". My friend [name] said that a crazy kid we know named [name] was coming over, naturally I was happy, cause this kid was a pyro, perhaps a bigger pyro then me and [name] combined. The best thing about him is that he had nothing to lose, so he would do something crazy like light and M-80 and throw it at undercover cops (HE DID BEFORE). He was supposed to come by four O' clock. I took my bike and went over to [name]'s house. [Name] was on his computer chating with [name], [name] was telling [name]that there were cops parked by his house undercover. ! He got caught with M-80s before, so the pigs were on alert by his house. He was telling us he was gonna streak nude past them, so naturally we jumped on the train and headed to [name]'s house. We arrived at [name]'s house, and he informed us that his mom heard that of what he was going to do, and she was watching him. It was then when I suggested he offer them some pepsi, popcorn and a pillow. His mom said that was OK, so we headed out. He went right over to the cops, and said "Hi officers, would you like some refreshments, and a comfy pillow?" They looked at each other, gave us the lifted eyebrow, laughed and obliged. They drove away when we went back into [name]'s house. [Name] and I hoped on the train and went back to his house. When we arrived back at [name]'s house, we played with firecrackers, breaking them in half, lighting them in plastic bottles, throwing them down sewers... etc. When I ran out, I headed towards my house, and [name] told me we will shoot of the stuff in his ! back yard later that night. I went home, and was greeted by my relatives that showed up for our yearly BBQ. I ate, and went online again, and tried to get a music video, but it wouldn't work, so I just started reading fireworks for everyone and went to sleep. My friend [name] came by, and bought $5 worth of fireworks from me. Then we went into his pool. I only stayed in for about 30 minutes, after that I dried up and went home. That is when the rain started. It was lite at first, but then got stronger before tapering off. I went online again and Instant Messaged [name] telling him to come by my house to shoot some bottle rockets. When he came, he brought with him two West Lake rockets, one was "Aaerial Flash" and "Willow rocket". I took out a small helicopter called "baby sunflower", and a spinner called "Wild and Crazy Ground Hogs" with homemade wings on it. After a long period of attempting to light the Baby Sunflower with our soggy-ass matches, we decided to just go back and get other matches. We lit the sunflower, but it did nothing, and when we lit the "Hog", which just fizzed in one spot, perhaps it got wet too. We went back to our house, were I built myself a launch tube for some rockets out of a PVC pipe, a block of wood, and some nails. We started lighting off bottle rockets out of the tube, which were pretty loud for their size. The people next door joking said "Hey, are you two lighting fireworks!" "I'm calling mayor Guiliani"! I continued lighting the bottle rockets until we ran out. Then I lit a willow rocket, which just stayed in the tube and shot colored stars out. My neighbor [name], the misirable polock as we call him, came out saying "uu vant me to cahl da Powice", I told him "go suck a dick", but I don't think he heard me. We stopped lighting shit off and went inside. It was about this time that I took out a firework called "the bomb" and was about to go light it off down my block, when I saw the same people who joked about tellin! g Guiliani were lighting fireworks off, starting the "chain reaction". So with added confidence, I headed down the block and lit off the bomb. It went off and made a noise like a cosmic piece of cloth has just been ripped. I then decided that I am just gonna risk shooting off my other stuff. I lit off some helicopters called "space fighters" they kicked ass, as do all brothers products. I also lit some good ol' 16 packs of Thunder Bomb crackers. Then when the people up the block started shooting off what appeared to be an Air Raid cake, a cake that shoots green M-80 like reports, I pulled out my 1. 4G mortars, and lit one "Iron Revenger" shell off just as the Air Raid finished. It went up to a descent altitude, with a crackling tail, and broke nicely into a crackling red and green willow. Everyone cheared. The neighbors next door started lighting off some fountains, so I pulled out some more stuff. I lit another 'copter, and it once again it illuminated the sky. Then I pulled out a homemade M-80; damn that thing packed a punch. I then lit a single Air raid shot, it kicked ass. The next big firework I took out was the "4th of July Spectacular" cake. It was fabulous! It shot 9 or so, rich, full, sky hugging breaks high into the sky. I did some more Air Raids, then pulled out another M-80, it was also loud as hell! All the neighbors around were lighting fountians and stuff, and the people up the block were doing cakes and other aerial items. I decided to do something dumb, I shot a homemade rocket, it flew up, turned 90 degrees, and flew straight up the block. Since the thing was powered by a mighty model rocket engine, it flew up the whole block, nearly hitting into some of the comets being shot up from a cake. It then made a slightly upwards turn, and went BOOM. It's payload was a flashpowder earthshaker, almost 20 grams. It set off nearly every car alarm in the zip code. Luckily noone was hurt, since I warned everyone to take cover! ! Since I did it all the way down the block, in all, it must have travelled horizontaly about 600'. It would have went even further if I didn't take out the delay in the engine. Since the rocket reached a final vertical altitude of over 100', dozens and dozens of people saw it, and cheered wildly. I continued the extravaganza with a cake called "Parachutes over America". It was beutiful. It shot up 25 breaks that left parachutes hanging in the air with red crackling spinners, and I did a rocket called Aerial flash, which did an average red-green break. I lit an M-80 just as the cops turned the corner, but after seeing all the people having fun, they told me "Be careful with that stuff", and drove off. We applauded the cops greatly. They waved and turned the corner. I was running out of stuff, and did a few more air raids, and one 100 strip of Zebra brand firecrackers. They kicked some major ass. I did another homemade rocket but it worked fine, flying hundreds of feet up, an! d giving off the 2nd loudest explosion of the day. Just as I ran out, I was pleasently surprised. My cousin drove by! He announced that he had a surprise! HE HAD A 36"MORTAR SHELL. I asked him what he was smoking, but he laughed and asked "Where you wanna do this shit?". I pointed to the woods, and hopped in his van. Along the way, we shouted to people "LOOK TOWARDS THE WOODS! THIS THING IS GOING UP". Pointing to the huge shell that was proudly jammed in the tiny windows of the van. He unloaded the mortar with some of his friends, and I carried the shell, damn was it heavy. A crowd of teenagers saw the shell, and along with other people cheared and gathered around. We set up the mortar in the mud, and I announced that the shell was dedicated to a girl I love named [name], the brave people of NYC shooting off fireworks, and of course our country. My cousin and I unrolled the ignition wire, we got back about 100 or so feet, and I pressed the button. The blast that followed wa! s nothing short of deafening. Almost as loud as the last homemade rocket. The rocket soared upwards followed by a white comet tail, which gave off small breaks every once in a while. It took it what seemed like an eternity to reach it's apex, but when it did WOW! It covered the horizon with a breathtaking Red, white and Blue Chrysanthamum, which changed to red, green and silver, then it crackled with many salutes included. The actual report it made upon breaking was the loudest thing I heard in 10 years! People everywhere were chearing! It was great! The girl I dedicated the shell to said she saw it, though her house is more than 4 miles away! It was by far the best shell I every shot off! We wrapped up the fourth of July with some crackers and bottle rockets, and everyone went home. I went to sleep, satisfied with the best fourth, ever. TAKE THAT GUILIANI!!! The only sad part is that I forgot to tape the shell! Awwww... I hope next year will be just as ! good! Wish me luck! *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* i had a great time, I had just made some homemade fireworks, I tried to bootleg them myself but they were kind of weak and kind of good. I made 1 big m-1000 kinda weak, moon travelers very good and some whistle bombs, also a spinning skyrocket, so it was 4th of july we left early morning to go camping. later that night we watched a firework show I was bored so I blew up some of my stuff first was the m-1000 pretty loud but other people had some blasters and they were loud I walked on the beach and lit a whistle bomb on the beach I threw it and it spun out of control whistled and blew up, people were clapping at me and I was like cool, so I had a croud. we were battling other people the guy with black cat mortars got the most claps. so I lit my skyrocket itwas a dud. so I kept adding fuses and litin it until it works so it finall did. it made a spiral spin and blewup. next I had my whistle bombs I just lit it and threw it. I used ninja firecrackers, piccolopete bombs, smokers, m-80, fountains, and some rockets. it was fun. but the best thing I loved during 4th was the m-80's. those babies were so loud you can feel the echo and boom. !! *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* Wednesday is probably the worse day of the year for the 4th to fall on. Should you take a long weekend? Maybe I should have taken the whole week off. After all, the fireworks stands in Washington State don't open until June 28, and many towns keep them closed until July first. The prices are all over the board. If I go north to Wally's World above Millcreek, there are some great stands and tents. Big Al's Temple of Boom is ran by some Vets and is a fun place. Good stuff and people who really enjoy fireworks. Then there is the huge tent that is ran by a local church. Again, good stuff and good prices. Finally, there is the TNT tent, ran by Pyrodyne. Frankly the worse selection, highest prices and least understanding of employees. But my problem is that I knew that if I wait and go to Kitsap County, I will get the best prices. You see, my father-in-law an I put on a private show of "C" fireworks each year. We needed 80 more roman candles and 50 fountains. The best price I could find for a roman candle east of Puget Sound was $.95 each. I knew that if I could wait, I could get them for $.25. I'm glad I waited. On July 1, I took my annual pilgrimage to Boom City on the Tulalip Indian Reservation, around 40 miles north of Seattle. I know the prices are high but there is simply no place on earth that comes closer to "fireworks heaven" than Boom City. Image 450 fireworks stands in around 10 acres. Each one decorated n a theme. You'll find Captains Kirks Enterprise, a Disco stand, a Seatte Mariner themed stand and much more. Frankly I go for the Indian Fry Bread and the environment. Not too much for buying. My son and I walked the rows and got the normal calls from the dealers to come see what they had. My standard response is that I'm just looking. One dealer was ready for me when I said that line. He pulled down a cake that was called "Just Looking". I got a good laugh from that one. I wanted some Smoke Jumper mortars. I finally found some from a dealer and got the box for $15. I was pleased. I took four days off from work to got over and set up the show. So on Monday July 2 I went over to help set up the show. Before I got there, I stopped at a stand in Kitsap Country and, sure enough, got some excellent Great Grizzly brand of 8-ball roman candles for $.25 each. Never fails! I went over to the site and began to inventory all the fireworks we had to use. I estimate our show was going to gave around 7000 shots. I had already made music for the show and even had created cues for the launches. This year we had 86 cues and 23 minutes of music. We had some great cakes this year, including 9 of The Beast, 4 Synchronized Displays, 300 mortars, 3000 Saturn Batteries (30 x 100 shot version), 187 roman candles, 3 Viper Strikes, 5 Atom Smashers, 9 Grapevines and tons more. My father in law built a firing board out of some nails and we spent most of July 4th wiring electric match to all of the pyro. It seemed odd, but every circuit checked out first time as we connected the wires. You know how you begin to worry when everything is going right? Trust that feeling. we had everything set up my around 2:30 in the afternoon. I went into the house to get a drink and take a break. Suddenly, I heard a loud blast, like a black powder cannon blast, followed by some other noises. But these sounds were more intense, and close. I ran to the door to see a hell in front of my eyes. The sky in our field was full of smoke, mortar breaks, whistles, sparks, flying things, shooting things, and flaming things. It was the most outrageous thing you have ever seen. For you see, every item we had hooked up was in the process of firing. All 7000 shots going off in around 3 minutes. I now have a good idea of what a fireworks stand blowing up would look like. Its not pretty. It generated so much heat that we melted some of our HDPE mortar pipes. After all the commotion was over, and the 3 small grass fires were out, we began to search for the reason this whole thing had happened. My father in law had attached the 12-volt battery to the board to test one cue. Come to find out the board was wired faulty and when he touched that test cue, it fired everything at once. Really, I don't recommend anyone try this. Its really hard to enjoy a fireworks display (1) during the day, (2) when everything is firing at the same time, and (3) so much smoke is in the air you can't see anything anyway. Then my wife came up to me, acting a bit stunned and said, "I think you made your soundtrack a bit too long"! (It's funny now, but lacked humor on the 4th). So, we cleaned up our mess well into the evening. Some neighbors went and got some fireworks and we had some leftovers., too. So my wife, son, sister in law and nephew had a small quiet family fireworks display this year.. And you know what? I loved it! Next year, we'll put on the show again. Heck we may even use the same music. But this year we are going to buy a real firing board and not make that mishap again. Once is enough and II will never forget it. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* I was reading your web page on m80s and I thought I'd write about a little information I have on these things. My late grandfather owned a cherry farm in Medina, New York. I used to spend about 4 weeks every summer up there with my family visiting. I can remember going with him to the local Agway outlet many times to buy boxes of M-80 fire crackers. They were sold in 1 gross square shaped boxes that had printing on them that read something like this: "M-80 FIRE CRACKER, FOR AGRICULTURAL USE ONLY! ONE GROSS (144 count). I believe they were about $5.00 per gross, I remember marveling at the fact that you could just go to a store and buy these things. They sold cherry bombs and ash-cans (silver tubes) also. They were only sold to folks with farmer's licsenses. This was around '65-68. My grandfather like the M-80s because they were the loudest. What he would and I guess other farmers used them for was to scare crows and other birds/pests out of the cherry trees at night. What he did was cut a two foot lenght of braided rope. He would then twist the braids open at about every 3 inches, insert 1 M80 (hence the fuse on the side) alternating firecracker side to fuse side all the way down the rope. He would then tie the rope (s) to the very bottom branch of every other cherry tree, he had 60 acres of trees! at dusk he would light the bottoms of the rope (s), wich was some slow burning type of material. As the rop burned upwards it would light one a M80. The firecracker would drop to the ground lit eventually exploding scaring the birds out of the trees! My family and I were treated to a lovely night of intermittant "explosions" until dawn. It wasn't that bad the land was perfectly flat and the trees pretty far away, but I can remember it like yesterday lying in bed hearing those pops and then the crows scurring outof the trees. We would leave about 2 days before the 4th of July, for home with me cluthching a brown paper bag holding one of those 8"X8" square boxes containing 144 wonderful M80 Firecrackers. My reward for helping my grand father help save his crop. I was the most popular kid in the neighborhood around the 4th and could actually command $1.00 per M80!! *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* Before I describe this year's Fourth of July celebration, I need to explain a little bit about our past 4th of Julys. It has become a tradition that we get together with our closest friends and set off some fireworks. We are lucky to live in a fairly rural area in Washington State where fireworks are, for the most part, legal. In addition, we live in a home that has almost a full acre of cleared pastureland that makes an ideal, safe location for the discharge of fireworks. Over the years, our fireworks celebration has gotten more elaborate as we've forsaken the kiddy fountain and gimmicky items in favor of artillery shells and cakes. We also discovered that the best selection could be found at an Indian reservation located just outside Anacortes, where we quickly learned that all prices are negotiable. About five year ago, after a particularly satisfying fireworks display, we got to discussing the idea of electronically discharging our fireworks. The next year I put together a simple control panel with four switches connected to a 12VDC battery charger (the kind used to charge car batteries). The fireworks themselves were prepared by wrapping a small piece of Nichrome wire around each fuse and attaching it via wires to the control panel. This worked amazing well, but the delays as the fireworks were reloaded were bothersome. I eventually added a couple more switches to increase the capacity but it didn't really help a lot. To resolve this problem, last year I put together the ultimate control panel - a nifty little panel with sixteen toggle switches and an eight position rotary switch. When configured in a matrix configuration this panel can control 128 devices! I based the design on several that I discovered on the Internet. I also put together seven racks of eight tubes each so that the artillery shells could be preloaded. Unfortunately, I underestimated the effort required to wire the panel to the fireworks. As a result, things came down to the wire as we desperately worked until the last minute. This left us with a rat's nest of wiring and no time to really test things out. The results were somewhat disastrous and we ended up having to abandon all our hard work and fall back to using a propane powered blow torch to light off last year's display manually. I was determined to not let that happen this year, so about mid June I began working out the kinks in my pyro control panel. The first step was to upgrade the wiring to thicker wire to ensure that more current could make it out to the ignition point. I also added terminal strips to the box to simplify the wiring process. When I went to test out the box, however, something was still wrong. Setting off a single item worked fine, but when I tried to test multiple connections things started shorting out! Not good! I had no choice but to start isolating individual circuits and try to figure out what was going on. This involved desoldering a lot of my hard work - never an enjoyable task. Fortunately, I eventually determined that the shorts were being caused by several diodes that had shorted out. Somewhat ironic, as the purpose of the diodes was to prevent such shorts. Eventually, all the bugs were ironed out and I had time to add a few fallback options - in particular I added the ability to hook up the old battery charger in case the internal transformer wasn't able to source enough current. Confident that the control panel was working, it was time to go shopping for fireworks. We took the hour-long drive up to the Indian reservation up in Anacortes. We headed directly to the Big Boys Toys booth, which has become our favorite over the years. The ladies that run the booth are very knowledgeable about the fireworks they sell and offer their repeat customers excellent deals with minimal haggling. This year saw our biggest budget yet with almost four hundred dollars to spend. We loaded up on cakes and shells, getting some favorites we remembered from last year as well as many new ones that the ladies manning the booth recommended. Here's some of the major items we purchased: Grizzly 90 shell artillery selection Pacific Blue Avalanche Ready 2 Rumble 4th of July Spectacular Great Willow Triple Threat The Claw Detonator The night before the fourth (that would be the third) we went to Everett to watch an AquaSox baseball game. The game was to be followed up with a fireworks display. I figured this would be great inspiration for our own show the next day. The AquaSox ended up getting hammered 15 to 5, but at least the fireworks show was about to begin. Hmm... I couldn't locate where they were going to set them off from. I expected to see huge racks of 6" black mortars around somewhere, but they were nowhere to be seen. Then a group of guys brought out some pieces of plywood with about a dozen cakes glued to each one. They set these down about six of these in center field. That's it?! I was expecting a big professional display and they come out with a few hundred dollars of consumer fireworks! Well, no matter. It was still an interesting show. They set off each group at cakes together (they had an electronic detonation system too) and it was certainly exciting to see so many cakes going off at once. Still, I was confident that our show the next night would be better -- if not quite as intense. I finished wiring up the show with a lot of help from my friends on the early evening of the fourth. It still took a long time to wire up but nothing like the previous year. We finished with plenty of time to spare and, unlike last year, we had time to check out each circuit -- which checked out fine. The next few hours were nervous ones as memories of last year's "fiasco" continued to haunt me. Sure everything worked flawlessly in the tests, but that was just a couple of connections. Could it handle the whole show - over a hundred items? If it fails this year my friends will lose all faith in my technical ability. At last it was show time... We started it out slow with a couple of Piccolo Petes and Killer Bees. So far, so good. The box is working well. Ok, the crowd's getting restless; time to move onto the bigger stuff. A few cakes and a number of shells go off and things are really picking up. The Claw is a nice item. Also, the shell assortment has some that were labeled mines. These are cool as they combine an upward fountain of sparks as the shell launches followed by a standard break. Very very nice. About half way through I set off the Triple Threat. It's a very neat item with a series of three loud reporting shells. It's a bit slow paced and repetitive, however, so I decide to add in the Great Willow. The combination is awesome! The large golden palms tower over the somewhat low altitude Triple Threat. The crowd loves it! The show continues with more shells and cakes until we start to get closer to the finale. The pyro control panel continues to work great but I've had a few shells fail to launch. Some of the shells explode at a very low height, which is unintended but kind of cool. The low altitude is no doubt due to a poor seal in some of the homemade tubes. Towards the end we have our first major failure - an entire rack (eight shells) fails to ignite. Must be a short somewhere. No big deal as we continue on to the finale. First we set off the Ready 2 Rumble. It's nice but nothing too memorable. Next we set off a group of 12 shells, two at a time in rapid succession. Then we light the big 36 shot Detonator. My daughter and her friend, who have been playing DJ and providing music during the show, switch to the Backstreet Boys song "Bye Bye Bye". The Detonator starts doing its thing and this piece is simply awesome! The shots are high, big and loud. The pace quickens as it reaches a climax. What a great show! We finished up by manually setting off the shells that failed to go off during the show. There are a total of about twelve. Not a bad percentage. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* My 4th of July this year was celebrated on the 3rd of July so that we could have the 4th to clean up and rest. This years show was done completely with electric matches and switches made from household light switches. My box has 40 switches. My wire and switches cost me no more then around 150. 00 but it allowed me to set off my fireworks 150 ft from them so that I could enjoy them. Here is a partial list of all my fireworks, which by the way were all, glued to boards. I had 23 different multi shot pancakes all lined up three of each different kind and all wired so that 3 matches would go off and send the 3 same exact multi shot in the air at the same time. That took 69 matches and 23 of the 40 switches. This was the main part of the show. In between I had 8000 firecrackers hung in the air to go off at the same time. Next was a 20 foot long water fall with stick fountains topped off with regular fountains on top all on top of a ten foot scaffolding. All of my fireworks came from Patriot fireworks and they make great #300 mortars of which I had 48 plus 8 flak Attacks which is a smaller mortar and 4 of a 12 shot #200 mortar all rigged together with slow fuse. My grand finale consisted of 96 reloadables all put together with sticky match and I lost count I think it was 36 different 90 shot pancakes. 10 120-shot Roman candle barrage. In addition, 16 more #300 mortars for effect. It took me 7 hours on the day of the show to wire all this up and six weeks of making boards with sides on them so that I could cover everything with saran wrap. The party started around 5:00 we ate at 6:30 and the band started at 8:15 and they were to play until around 9:15 or 9:30 and then the fireworks show was to begin. This was to be my best and safest show. Ten years of trial and error was finally coming to a head. The crowd was starting to grow to about 250 I was 10 minutes from throwing the first switch when my wife came to me and said the police were coming down the path. It seems that someone had tipped off the fire Marshall and since the state, that I live in does not approve of anything other then fountains I was busted. It took two pickup truck loads to haul away. I even made the local TV news and newspapers. It turns out even though I have been doing this in my neighborhood for several years we have a jerk who if he sees something that is not right whether it harms or affects him he has to get involved. I am told that his wife does not give him Jollys therefore, this is how he gets his jollys. I always thought neighbors talked to each other. I even paid for all the food and the fireworks but I did not invite the right people. Needless to say I have a court date coming up and my neighbors have already said they would help pay my fine. As you can tell this was my worst 4th ever and at this point, I am afraid to even touch another firework not because they are not safe in capable hands but I have been branded like the "Scarlet Letter" I cannot fault the Fire Marshals they were only doing their job and they were kind about everything. I think I impressed them that this was not just some drunks in the middle of a field but a well thought out show with all the safety features that one could have with the exception that I did not have a permit. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* I live in Washington State and just about every year me and a group of friends travel up to Camano Island to shoot off fireworks at my cabin. There are around 50 cabins on the same beach as ours and every cabin seems to spend a good chunk of money on fireworks. Basically every year our goal is to beat out all the neighbors and up to this year we have never come close. We normally travel to Boom City by Marysville to spend around $600 on fireworks each 4th. Boom City is on an Indian reservation and consists of around 150-200 fireworks stands. It's truly an awesome sight and I would recommend going there even just to look around. Each year we have progressively become more disappointed with the out come of our shows. Last year we purchased lots of very heavy cakes thinking they would be good because they had more powder in them. The thing that we were not aware of is that most of the weight of a cake is the clay they put in the bottom and has nothing to do with how good the cakes is! If anyone ever tells you that you can tell how good a cake is by how much it weighs then buy your fireworks somewhere else, because they are either trying to rip you off or have no idea what they are talking about. So with all the past disappointments we decided this year we would do something different and order our fireworks online. We searched the web and found some great deals at victoryfireworksinc. com. After shipping I believe we ended up spending just over $1000. We had so many fireworks that we needed to rent a Ryder truck just to haul them all. We ended up trading some of the fireworks we ordered to get a larger variety. Between the time we received our shipment and the fourth we had 3 mini shows so we could try out various cakes and other things we had purchased. This is the list of what we ended up with to light off on the 4th. Cakes 1-Super Crackling Rainbow (Victory Brand) -Awesome! Get this cake!! 1-Sky Painter (Black Cat) - A fun daytime cake when you start getting anxious before show time. 1-Great Willow (Great Grizzly) Really nice cake and highly recommended 3-China Dragon (Brothers) - Has a nice effect 3-Killer Alligator (Brothers) - Makes some very funny noises! 3-Fish Bowl Commotion (Brothers) - Many different little affects going off 8 at a time 4-New Era Celebration- really cool, but doesn't last long 4-Wild Boar (Brothers) - Another noise making cake 4-Bomb Blast/Boom Town (Victory Brand) - Very loud booms and highly recommended 6-Wild Stallion (Victory Brand) - Super small, but is one of the best cakes I have ever shot off. 500 gram Cakes 1-Magnificent 5- A waste of money 3-Blonde Joke (Brothers) If you only buy one 500gram get this one. 3-Marrooned!! (Brothers) One of the best 3-Hicktown Heaven (Brothers) One of the best 3-Flower Power (Brothers) One of the best 2-Misc 500gram cakes Shell Packs 4-Rambo Kid Shells (12 per box) (Behai) Best shells on the market 4-Double Impact Shells (12 per box) (Behai) Best double break shells out there 1-Goliath Shell pack (36 per box) Nice size box with almost the same shells as Double Impact and Rambo Kid. It's a better deal just to buy 2 boxes of Rambo Kid and 1 Double Impact, because then you get more of the better shells. Misc 12-Vulcan #500 single shot tubes- Nice breaks, but Rambo Kid shells just as good 20-Saturn Missile 25 shot- Always a bunch of fun 3-Skyscraper Fountain (Behai) - A lot of stuff packed into one little fountain 3-Strobe Pots (Starr) - High quality, but I liked the really cheap strobes better 5-Shogun Power Candles- There ok, but next year I'm getting Crazy Aces 144-10 ball roman candles- Always a favorite 18- Super Rockets- WOW!! 2- 5inch Shells We invited a number of people up to our cabin for a BBQ before the show. We had 5 people working all day long to get everything set up and ready for the show. We had a bunch of HDPE tubes for the mortars, which we put in racks filled with sand. We strung Shogun roman candles together in groups of 6. Shells were rigged with sticky match to shoot 2-4 at a time. We also set up our finale by gluing 15 of the 500gram cakes to a 4x8' piece of plywood and fused them to fire slightly over lapping each other with three going at once at the very end. Around 10:00pm the cabins around us began to light stuff off so we decided to start going. We started with the miscellaneous stuff like roman candles and single shot tubes. Then we lit off 20 of the Saturn missile batteries all at the same time with some sticky match. This got everyone on the beaches attention! I would recommend this as a cheap awesome effect for anyone. The Saturn Missiles also look great if you shoot off a couple 96-color pearls at the same time. Next we lit off 60 10 ball roman candles connected with sticky match (another great cheap effect). Now it was time to move onto the cakes. We started with the individual ones and progressed to shooting three at a time. It fills the sky a lot better when you have that many cakes going at once. In the middle of lighting off the cakes we lit one of the racks of 30 shells. After the shells we started lighting off the rest of the cakes and other shell racks. Once we had finished lighting off the cakes and shells we moved on to the Super Rockets. You can see these rockets on PYROVideo #1. They are expensive, but if you want something that will really impress the crowed this is a must! The breaks on these things are huge! After the Super Rockets we took out the 500mg cakes on the 4x8. We set the board down on the beach and started it going! All I can say is WOW! When it was over the sky was completely black and the beach was silent, because every other cabin on the beach stopped shooting off their fireworks to watch! Then the cheers started and we were feeling great. It would have been fine to end the show there, but we had to make sure that no one could come close, so to cap the night off we lit two 5inch shells. Those 2 shells worked perfectly and ended the night on a very high note. This year we definitely beat out all the other cabins on the beach! It was a great feeling and accomplishment. I cannot wait until next year to do it all over again!. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* My story began a week before the 4th I had not done any fireworks in 2000 so I made up for it this year. I went to a stand a day before I got paid and started looking and I got to know the firework stand operator. Well the next day I went and got my check and headed right for the stand. I ended up getting a Black Cat Hustler Artillery Shell set, Black Cat 3rd Generation Double Artillery Shell Set, Rambo Kid Canister Shell kit, and finally for the finale a Brothers new "Heavy Weight" Cake which was called Saturday Night Special. Then I had to wait a week to fireworks due to rain preventing me from doing them earlier. Well the 4th came and I was so excited the rain had ended. I started with the Rambo Kid shells these things are loud when they leave the mortar and are loud when the burst I enjoyed these very much. Next was the Hustler and I was VERY impressed with the height and big burst and the first time I had seen a RING SHELL in a Class C item. Then the final Artillery Shells the Double Shelled 3rd Generations these were the BEST shells I have seen the leave the mortar loudly and the double burst makes a great show. Then it was time for the finale, the "Saturday Night Special" which had 36 shots and what a finale it was, started out with Comets with Red, Green, and Blue heads then it had Comets to Burst, then burst with whistle and bees, and then the last 12 shots were just Comets with burst over and over and over again and OMG Brothers has created a great cake. My mom and her boss and her coworkers loved the show and my dad as the loaded and I kept the sky ablaze and it looked like a professional show and all I can say is WOW. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* The box of new fireworks was stashed away in the back of the big closet since last fall. Living in a place where private fireworks are illegal, I've been able to maintain a modest supply of fireworks over the years from random driving trips to fireworks-friendly locales. Until recently. Last fall, at the suggestion of a friend, I ordered a new supply, by mail, from a printed list, sight unseen. The box is heavy, and July 4 morning is not unlike Christmas morning. The contents are amazing--much bigger and more exciting than any fireworks I've ever purchased before. The Samurai Hunters, for instance, are huge! --Major rockets, on 30-inch stakes, with a launcher! Did I really order all this stuff? First I re-read the presentation and safety suggestions, then start sorting out my collection. The smallest items, little spinners (Ground Bloom Flowers, Camellias, Sunflowers) and tiny fountains, are arranged in an old candy tin with four sections. Roman candles and other tall items, including sparklers, are unwrapped and placed in an up-ended shoebox. Punks and matches are collected in another small box, and the bigger items placed in a second crate. (Notes for next year: I need a good wooden box with a hinged lid, approximately the size of a milk crate, maybe a bit bigger. But not too big for me to carry, full. ) Add two flashlights and my little battery-operated camping lantern. I wish I'd gotten organized earlier, and secured some cinder blocks--the idea of two cinderblock forts for placement of fireworks is a very good one--another note for next year. Oh yes, and two buckets of water, near the crate where the fireworks are held, and an old watering can for the roman candles. My show starts around 8:30, dusky but not quite dark. It's a small but enthusiastic group--maybe about ten people, no little kids, thank goodness. One of the teen guys is thrilled--he used to do fireworks as a kid, and can't *wait* to help. So we start with the small things--the spinners and little fountains. Then one of the Space Fighters, which were great--they spin up really high, then a boom and a nice shower of sparks. We then just kind of rotate: some of the small things, a roman candle or two, sparklers, one of the bigger items. The first larger one was The Skyscraper--nice effect, not too tall, not too loud. Then the first Samurai Hunter--a very showy, very cool rocket. The Crazy Club roman candles are great--five different effects--different colored balls, some whistling, some just a loud report, etc. The Happy Bees candles are sort of scary, because they tend to shoot the balls out sideways. If I used these again, I'd start them much farther away from everyone. The biggest popular favorite of the evening is the Howling Tigers--one of the multiple firing pieces, each one spiraling up, whistling, then a sharp report and lots of sparks--we all loved it! The Turn of the Century is beautiful--it reminds me of the wonderful golden showers from the Eiffel Tower at the Millennial Night. And not too noisy--a plus for me but not for most of my audience :) This was great. It's such a kick stepping out of my everyday "church lady" role--oh yes--to be the one who organizes and fires up the end-of-the-day spectacular for Independence Day! *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* this is my storie I live in new york so I cant do many things and my parents wouldnt let me do fireworks anyway but one day one of my freinds brothers had bought a ton of smoke bombs and smoke balls they were pretty sweet anyway when I told my other freind about it me and im decided co make a smoke show since we are only in our 11 and 12's and we can handel real fireworks but on the 4th me and him set up about a 30 minute show that we called the smoke crackel pop show becuz we had lots of snappers bomb bags party popers and smoke bombs so we ended up spending $270.00 on just smoke and flares and wick so when I finally came we made a show it consided of: color changing smoke balls color smoke balls big mamith smoke toys smoke cheimneys (which can fill up a whole house with smoke) snappers bomb bags party poppers battle smoke flares model rockets (for spinners) smoke candels so we layed every thing out and invited a lot of people and we ended up having too much smoke balls and every thing that we could have 5 other shows but we decided to just do them every once in a while for fun cuz when our show started it smoked everyone out. well thats it *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* This Fourth of July was pretty good. I always try to get my hands on some fireworks. This can be hard since I live in a state where they're banned, and there's a certain dictatorial mayor of a very large city that has a "zero tolerance" law. (I think you might be able to guess where I live). Anyway, I had fireworks from a few years ago, and I was very lucky to have bought more on the morning of the Fourth from a friend. My arsenal included, "atomic bomb" firecrackers, jumping jacks, bottle rockets (air traveller and whistling bottle rockets), wild geese rockets, glitterous rockets, an 8 oz. rocket, roman candles, a cake named "news transmitter", a parachute, 3 festival balls, and other small fireworks. I went to my cousins house for the day, and at night I planned on lighting my fireworks in a near-by park. However, when I got there, there was an amazing show being put on by this family, complete with buried mortars shooting professional fireworks, tons of cakes and reloadable shells. I wasn't going to compete with that, so I waited until I got home and set off some of my stuff at a park. There were a bunch of small kids that really enjoyed the show. I started small and worked up to the rockets, festival balls and repeater. I think the best thing was the news transmitter. It had loud whistles that everyone liked. The parachute was very good, to my suprise, and the festival balls were also good crowd pleasers. After seeing how people loved the amateur show put on near my cousin's house, I hope to get a lot more cakes and reloadable shells for next year. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* my 4 of July fireworks story here are the items we had 1. 2 packs of assorted rockets 2. 6 grosses of bottle rockets 3. 30 ground bloom flowers 4. 7 packs of 40-40 firecrackers 5. 1500 water proof fire crackers 6. 180 morning glories 7. 1 California rocket 8. and last but not least 6 great flying helicopters We started out with the 24 assorted horse rockets. they were great. then we set off all of the morning glories and then the 6 grosses of bottle rockets. then we set off all of the ground bloom flowers then the packs of 40-40 boomer fire crackers which scared the piss out of my dog. then the helicopters then the California rocket then the 1500 water proof fire crackers. all in all it was a great forth of July. we had a lot of fun it was great. hope yours was great to. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* My fourth of july started on the 5th last year when I decided to put on a good show this year. I went to the local stands and bought my fireworks for half price (the only way to go). I didnt know alot about fireworks but knew liked brothers products so purchased mainly there brand. Between the two stands I went to this is what came home with me. MORTAR KITS-bad boys, super kids, excaliber, american chief, blackcat 3rd generation, viper strike, and 2 36shot prime time. CAKES-2 america invincible, 3 beyond 2000, 2 blaze of lights, 1 blue on blue, 2 clone, 1 china dragon, 2 dark knights, 2 dayton night, 2 fire astral, 2 fantasy general, 2 flaming wings, 2 golden century, 2 hacker attack, 2 invincible army, 2 magic carpet, 2 magical whirley, 2 sunglow, 2 texas cyclone, 2 wild boar, 2 master of magic, 2 the claw, 2 niagra falls, 2 daffodil, 1great godzilla, 2 millinium bug, 2 warring states, 1 shagadelic mojo, 4 phantasm, 2 pyro pandemonium, 1 pyro glyphics, 1 air defense, 1 atomic afterglow, 2 100ct missle battery, 1 saturday special (new 500 gram brothers cake), 2 lightning storm. FOUNTAINS- 2 pot of gold, 2 pop goes the fountain, 1 monarch of the forest, 1 big bertha. I also got 2 1000ct rolls of firecrackers, 20 apache 2s. CANDLES-lightning storm, handdful, gatlin pack, chirping oriole. After buying this I looked on the internet to find out more about the items purchased and found your site. I ordered your book fireworks a to z and its great. You are doing the part time pyros in the world a great service, and cant wait for your next book. thank you for sending me the info on putting on a good SAFE show also. 1month before the 4th I started getting ready for the show, I made 2-15ct. mortar racks, cut 2 sheets of plywood into 1 foot strips, and started getting an idea about the order of the show. I used liquid nails to glue all the cakes down and also had a 6x6 piece for my finale. I made quick match by taking strips of masking tape and laying 2 yard sticks on top leaving 1/2" exposed then put pyrodex on sticky part put fuses in the middle and fold over, worked awesome for the finale. Now to the show. I recruited 2 people just to reload mortars as I lit the rows of cakes 2 and 3 at a time then ran back and lit mortars back to cakes mortars etc. the show went off without any problems the croud was cheering all the time and said it was the best home show they had ever seen, I was very proud. after the end of the finale I looked to the street and there was a policeman cheering, I walked over to him and asked what was up, he said great show. he then told me someone called the police an said the wildlife were terrified and the squirrels were running for ther lives, he laughs and said have a good night. thanks again and I hope every one had a safe fun 4th. LETS ALL BE SAFE TO KEEP FIREWORKS LEGAL AND PART OF OUR ENJOYMENT. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* Well our 4th was Great !!!! We had started off early the 4th with a piece of plywood "2'X8'" I glued 30 cakes to it and fused all of them together with visco, low, med., high and load stuff, all mixed on the board. My friend showed up about 7:30 with a bunch of stuff and so we started out with some big boomer crackers and then went to a few dozen roman candles. We started lighting a bunch cakes off after that, one right after the other. After about 45 min. of that, we light the visco on the plywood. It was at that point when two cops showed up at the far end of the street (WITH NO LIGHTS AT ALL ON) and watched the whole thing before coming down to our end and getting out of the cars. I was lighting a dozen or so candles with a torch when I looked up and just as the candles started going off "there they were" standing at the end of my driveway, They were cool about it and only took a few roman candles we had left outside. The best part was just before they left, one said, "That was an impressive display!" The other cop said if we end up coming back to this party, someone from this party will be coming back with us. I guess our show was too long! Also, it doesn't help having a neighbor with no life who has nothing better to do then call the cops when he sees all the other neighbors on the block having a great time watching and cheering on our show, or else the cops wouldn't have showed up at the house in the first place. (We later found out the cops got over 3 complaint calls and had no choice but to come. ) *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* Just wanted to give you a report on what we did for the forth. I started out researching different fireworks and their effects through your book and the PYROvideo and Kellner demo tapes. I then made a large wholesale order to Victory that included mostly aerials and the neww Brother's cakes. I've got a great place to shoot off fireworks on the beach here on the Texas Gulf coast although sometimes wind is a problem. I assembeled and gathered various items for the show including a 20 cue CD box with ematches, Sticky match and visco fuse and 100 HDPE Mortars built in wooden racks at about 25 tubes per rack. I shot all cakes in groups of 3 (except for the heavyweight cakes shot in doubles. All cakes were linked with stickymatch and placed about a foot apart on plywood with the end of each stickymatch string attached to an ematch. I linked each rack of artillery shells with green visco with each fuse joined every 1-2" for 3-5 second interval timing between shells. I tied a simple overhand knot with each artillery shell fuse onto the visco and secured this with a small overlapping piece of stickymath slo to increase fuse/fire contact time. I fired the cakes in this order: 1) 25 shot artillery shells--Trilogy, Rambo Kid, Double Impact, Heavy Artillery and some Pyroking--all mixed 2) Warp Speed#3 3) Another 25shot artillery rack 4) Wild Bear#3 and Birds of Paradise#3 shot together 5) Another 25 shot atillery nrack 6) Cover Story #3 7) Atom splitter#3 8) Burning Ice#3 9) Niagra falls#5 and Millineum bug#3 shot together 10) bull's rule#1 and Marooned#1 shot together 11) Saturday Night Special 12) Flower Power #1 13) Desparate attempt#2 and Freedom Rocks#1 shot together 14) What a Blast #3 15) 100 Yellow Ribbons #3 and ALittle Bit More#1 16) Another artillery rack with 25 Shells shot within 10 secs along with saturn missle batteries 20 of the 25shot 17) Starr 300 tubes Golden Spider #10 fired along with Starr Triple splitters #6 for the finale with the addition of 8 Critical acclaim comet type artillery shells shot from a fan shaped rack..... Everything really went pretty well considering this was my first attempt at a decent show. My family and friends were really whooping and hollering (They were about 200ft away) It was really neat to kick back in a chair 100ft away and let the thing go off with controlled timing. All ematches did their job. All but 3 artillery shells fired (allRambo kids--They must have more resistant fuse or something).. I was very impressed with the Warp Speed cakes and that Wild Bear/Bird of Paradise combo was striking. Multiple Atom splitters were also neat and left large crisscrossing smoke trails in the sky which were lit up by other fireworks. I love the elegant effect of the Trilogy shells and the timing for each smaller shell is impeccable. The Pyro King shells had a beatiful glittering comet tail and the Desperate Attempt cakes had a neat crossette effect. The only thing that I was bummed about was not getting this on video. I guess I really did not expect it to be that cool but it was. Next time I'll do the video thing. My main reason that I got the CD box was for safety but once I saw all of the timing possibilities I was really glad that I had gotten the electrical system and it was very affordable (ODA enterprises). Anyway, Looking forward to New years. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* my brother and I plan the family fireworks show every year this years planning started in janurary (of course we added a few odds and ends afterwords) but by april we had our order and had the show planned out. july 3rd we unpacked everything, tied visco fuse and glued things down. july 4th we packed and headed back down to my sisters where about 45 family members were going to meet. we had a great day of volley ball, base ball and horse shoes.. not to mention the great cook out (mmmm!!!) here is how the show went at 9:00 pm: (4) 150 shot saturns.. (2) 102 shot call from outer space (2) 110 shot twitter glitter..... (8) super kids jumbo purple shells.. (1) 20 shot mumbo jumbo (1) 25 shot crashing rainbow.. (2) 19s toot-n-twirl (1) 19s midnight thunder..... (2) 19s sm. festival ball (1) 16s grand canyon.... (24) airhawk artillery shells... (2) 25s killer alligator & (1) 25s the beast (awesome in groups).. (1) 25s freebirds (1) 9s ace combat (1) 16s super stallion... (1) 25s birds of paridise (1) 25s magic carpet.. (4) 25 s coconut grove song (2) 25s wild west (1) 25 shot deep impact.. (1) 25s air raid (very loud report for a small cake.. everyone cheered!!!! (1) 25s sound king (1) 16s daffodil. (4) niagra falls (4) 4th of july spectaculars (awesome 9s cake), 16s biela comet, 16s wild bear, 16s martin bomb, 25s millineum festival, 10s great godzilla (the sound brought alot of laughter from the crowd), 25s oasis, 25s helter skelter, 25s aerial gunfire, 19s pyro portrait, 19s aerial oasis, 25s cajun pagent, 12 s aerial double decker (cool effect), 25s pyro penemonium, 25s phantazam, 16s golden corn, (3) 25s hollywood trip........ (FINALE....... ) 60 shot board of brother artillery shells bad boy, super kid, king of the universe (xlnt ring shells) & air hawk.. (12) 4th of july spectacular (8) 9 shot whisling and (12) 7 shot night shell.... the finale was so good people came up afterwords and offered ($$$$) I declined of course the jesture was pmt enough... only 364 days left till we can do it again... *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* I like big colorful long lasting fireworks. My neighbor down the street and myself had a fireworks contest. The neighbors in the middle acted as judges. I won all the votes. I started with fountains and then the repeaters. Total cost was right at $200.00. Here is the list starting with the fountains. I used a Giant punk to light the fireworks. Garden Party Splendid flower Tropical Sunlight Pop goes the fountain Shell fountain Repeaters Streaking comets, solar cyclone, dragons flying, century spectrum (spaceman), Rainbow Knights (BP), Wild Space (Winda), All fired up (FOA), wild as the devil (FOA), Color of the World (BP), Artillery Shells (BP2537), Super knights (BP), American Power (Winda), Shimmering stars (BC), Romantic Trip (BP), Super Fighter (Cannon), Howling Tiger (BP), Denver (BP), Magical Whirly (BP), Magic Carpet (BP), Hurricane Georgia (Winda), Soiree acrobatics (LM), Hothead (?), Exotic mesh (cannon), Fighting Force (BP), 36 shot Garden in spring (wl), Hot gear (cannon), and for the grand finale a 500 gram repeater called shell of shells (cannon). I also picked up Fairy with Flowers (WL) I finally got the fuse lit but it did not ignite, I did not mess with it after a few minutes I pushed it to one side away from the spectators. I used bricks to ensure that the fireworks did not tip over. I am happy to report no accidents or injuries in our contests. The fireworks were all great with the best ones being Super Knights, Wild Space, American Power, Howling Tiger, Denver, Hurricane Georgia, Hothead, Exotic Mesh, Fighting Force, and Shell of Shells. I have seen two of the 500 Gram cakes by Cannon Tiger Thunder and Shell of shells both are fantastic. All three of Winda repeaters were among the best rated. I would be interested to see if Winda/Panda comes out with 500 gram shells next year. Wild Space had 25 gigantic Peony bursts each one a separate color, Hurricane georgia had three bursts in every shot 2 big bursts and 1 medium one. American power had two big bursts in each shot. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* Well, I guess it all started about 6 weeks ago. I'm new to the internet, so this was my first time searching for fireworks online. I spent a few days checking out all of retailers online and making sure I could have fireworks shipped to me. I finally placed a medium sized order with a company in Muncy, PA. The only reason I ordered some of my fireworks was because they had Thunder Kings, but these turned out to be totally different than the ones I used to get. They were WEAK. I worked for a few days building morter tubes and then just waited for the local dealers to set up. Some of them set up 2 weeks before the 4th, so I just went to all of them looking for cakes that I hadn't lit before. I didn't find much. One of these dealers had a VERY large tent but only had 3 different cakes. I couldn't believe this!!!! I decided to wait for my normal dealer to set up. He started to set up about a week before the 4th. As always, I went there while they were putting out stock so I could make sure I got certain items. I bought alot of cakes and some shells. I spent the next few nights fusing shells together in groups of 8, most of my shells were fired this way. After this I spent a couple nights wiring the finale and testing fuses and some cakes and shells. I fired alot of shells and some cakes on the 3rd. I had many shells left over from New Years. When I got up the morning of the 4th it was raining, and it rained until 8:30pm. I wasn't sure if the show would go on, but when it finally quit raining the skies cleared up nicely. Me and three of my friends started lighting at 9:15pm. Most of the cakes were fired by themselves, but a few were fired together. In the past I have always took my time firing cakes, but this year as soon as one finished someone was lighting another. This worked great and dramatically improved my show! We lit cakes and 8 shells at a time non-stop until 11:30, then we carried out the finally and let it rip. WOW!!!!! This was awesome. Here's a list of what went up during the regular part of the show. The Shells: I had about 200 total, but I lit alot before the 4th, so I don't know the exact amount. I had the following brands: Cannon Heavy Artillery, Bad Bombs, Bullet Bombs, Black Cat Magnum and Black Cat Palms, The Griz, and Badass Double Break Shells by Great Grizzly-----These are the only double breaking shells I have tried and liked. When they launch you can see 2 separate shells going up. They have huge color breaks! I don't know why but no one had Rambo Kid shells here this year, but these doubles made up for it. Here's the cakes: 2 25s Gatling Gun, 1 16s Glow Worms, 1 16s Missouri Spirit, 6 25s Laser Tank, 3 25s Firing Squad (not good), 1 25s Marching Comets, 1 25s Cassablanca, 2 25s Color Whirlwind, 1 37s Dragon Trill (disappointment), 6 36s Battle of Colors (note: 2 of these were ordered and looked just like the ones I got here, but they didn't have the LOUD bangs), 1 12s Fiendish Viking, 1 25s Sound King (the descp. on these say they have a very loud bang---they actually sound like a plain firecracker!!), 1 25s Fire Astral, 1 25s Bee & Blossums, 1 25s Rainbow Knight, 1 25s Wild Mushroom, 1 37s Overlord in Sky (nice!), 4 25s Thunder Kings (WEAK--these belong in a trash can!), 4 25s Majic Carpet, 3 25s Hollywood Trip, 2 25s Hurricane Mitch, 1 10s Blowout (junk!), 2 25s Independence Day, 2 25s Super Knights, 2 25s Beyond 2000, 2 25s Voices of Century (nice), 2 25s Supreme Delight, 2 25s Wild West, 1 20s Stars & Stripes, 1 30s Violets (not good), 1 14s Monster King (unique, loud humming sound), 1 Six Shooter (waste of money), 2 19s Thunderation (expensive and lousy!), 4 25s Carrier Strikes (nice color, loud bangs, cheap price!) 1 36s The Boss (not good for the price), 19s Screaming Whirley Birds (only firework to ever make me cover my ears, major SCREAMS), 4 25s Killer Alligator, 1 25s Deep Impact, 1 20s American Dogfight, 1 25s Rainbow Rock, 1 36s Mutant Freak (pathetic!), 4 25s Command Test (one of my favorites), 1 25s Purple Chrysanthemum, 1 25s The Virus (nice), 1 25s Cajun Pageant (nice), 8 25s Twisted Nights (I HIGHLY recommend this one), 2 25s Mardigras Parade, 12 25s Oriental Thunder (VERY, VERY LOUD!!), 6 25s Thundering Flower (AWESOME DISPLAY), 4 10s Willows, 6 19s Titanium Salute with Tails (LOUD), 2 10s After Midnight, 3 25s Succession of Color, 2 25s Pacific Blue, 4 25s Rock And Roll, 2 25s Wild Imagination. ---------The stuff in the finale was not included in the above list. THE FINALE: 25 assorted morter shells, 18 25-shot Oriental Thunders, 18 25-shot Twisted Nights, 9 25-shot Thundering Flowers, 10 25-shot Cajun Pageants, 10 25-shot Laser Tanks, and 10 36-shot Battle of Colors!!! This was the first real finale i've done. When it was going off, it was UNBELIEVABLE!!! If everyone pitches in again next year for a finale then I will definitely do this again. I didn't have a single fuse fail and I used about 80 feet. Keep up the good work. You have a wonderful site!! I hope everyone had a great 4th of July, I certainly did!! My Favorites: Shell---Badass Double Break Shells Best overall cake---Thundering Flower Best color cake---Twisted Nights or Ass Kicking Bone Crunching Fun Best Bang---Oriental Thunder *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* Well, another 4th has come and gone and I have to say thisone was great! I went fireworks shopping on june 30th and spent about 250. 00 on fountains and wheels and such. Everything else here is illegal but that did not stop me from lighting of blackcat bottle rockets and firecrackers. I electrically fred my show using the radio match system--it worked great! Did not see that manycops this year busting people using fireworks. There where so many rockets and shells and crackers going off around here that it was a real 4th of july! Just wish I had some mortars and some nice rockets to shoot --- " He who hath once smelt the smoke is never again free " *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* Overall the 4th in Arizona was a bust. Arizona is one of the few class C illegal states, with no fireworks of any kind allowed without permits & insurance & all that bureaucratic nonsense. I had reservations about moving here in the first place. But, several local acquaintances assured me the situation wasn't as grim as all that. Unlike California, where a single firecracker gan beget a felony arrest, AZ is mostly more laid-back when it comes to enforcement. Well, all of that seems to be in question. About two months ago one of our local pyros was busted by teh feds with a garage full of home-made stuff. Well, one could say he asked for it, but still he's a decent fellow and it's too bad for him. In the wake of this our local licensed shoots have been put on indefinite hold, due to the understandable concerns of our host. The icing on the cake was the more recent bust of another of our local guys for class C. Paranoia sweeps the land. Back to the 4th per se. I began the morning with an injury. No, not the dreaded fireworks injury; I never got that far. Had a bike accident and a nasty fall. Put my mood wrong from the start. Then went looking for some ordinary roll caps, which could be hit with a dead blow hammer. No dice. Checked even the hillbilly central: Wal-Mart. No cap guns or caps in sight. Other toys stores proved equally wimpy. Couldn't even find a lousy roll of caps. Discretion with other material seemed prudent. SHot some shows when I first arrived here. But setting up in AZ in 110 degree heat is no picnic. To exacerbate matters, we had a run-in with the local fire marshall on one of the shows that proved a truly educational experience. What a prick. Knew the rule book but had no grasp of reality, nor any manners. I don' need that kin' of headache. So, I shot no show this year, thank you very much. My girlfriend and I went down to see the Phoenix municipal show. Well, they did have some nice material for a commercial show. Pattern shells, Chinese junk, lots of salutes -- all fired electrically. The local PD seemed to have a good grasp of crowd control, and it was needed. Hadn't seen so many hillbillies since I left Missouri. Well, we pray for better weather next year. A tip o' the hat to our bitch of a governor, Republican Jane Hull, for vetoing fireworks legalization last year. May she rot in Hell. All the Best from Phoenix A J Smith *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* We started the show with a 8, 000 cracker Celebration Roll. It was still rolled up when we lit it. The repeaters (not in order) were: Mezz-Merre Crackling Rainbow Ace Combat Atom Splitter Celestial Body Fighting Daggerfall Denver Explosions on Jupiter Reign of Heroes Special Troops Super Knights Double Delight Silver Crosette A Little Green Niagara Falls Biela F. Comet Lustrous Lights America Invincible Fire Astral Howling Tiger Tropical Paradise Molotov Cocktail Pyro Pandemonium Warp Speed Magic Carpet Crashing Rainbow Coconut Grove Song Shimmering Crackling Gold Battle of Colors Midnight Monsoon Thunder King Triangle Blossom Happy Spring Shining Coronal Strobe Thunder King Multi Color in Sky Remember the Alamo Strobing Thunder Crackling Tail to Color Bombette Simultaneously with the repeaters, the shells were: 66 3rd Generation, 69 Cannonballs, and 72 Triple Impact. We had 2 independent teams that tried to do them in vollyes of 4 shells at a time. Towards the end of the show, we did 24 Super Rockets, some in volleys of 6 at a time. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* To start off, we had an awesome July 4th. We had twice as many people watching this year as last year which includes all the neighbors on my cul de sac. We particularly liked the Magic Crystal. My brother and I were amazed at the height that this item reached. Everyone especially liked the aerials. We started the display around 8:30 P. M. and we finished up around 11:00 P. M. My favorite fountains were the Jubilee, toy soldier, pot of gold, and ratta-tat-tat. We had many cakes by Brothers. The best one was the millenium bug. It ended up being a fantastic display and everyone was safe and happy. BROTHERS CAKES: millenium bug turn of century killer alligator china dragon hollowing tiger crazy aces wonders of the world BLACK CAT ITEMS: jubilee fountain toy soldier fountain one inch four color fountain pot of gold fountain ratta-tat-tat fountain MISC. ITEMS: mighty cobra garden in spring violet assorted fountains assorted rockets assorted ground items *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* My birthday is the Fourth of July and it maybe because of that I have always greatly enjoyed buying and lighting fireworks and this year was no exception. I live in Derby, Kansas a suburb of Wichita. My wife and I took a weekend vacation to Oklahoma City the weekend before the Fourth and on the way back stopped at a large fireworks stand just on the north side of OKC heading back toward Kansas. Oklahoma law allows fireworks to go on sale earlier than in Kansas and typically they have been cheaper (although this proved not to be the case this year) so I wanted to get some items. We got alot of the usual (smoke bombs, ground flowers, fountain etc) Some of the more prominent items included: a reloadable shell ( six loads - each a triple shell) called Princess Leia. They performed very well although the 2nd and 3rd breaks were less of each shell were less outstanding than the first. I also got one of my favorites - Mighty Python which shoots 19 shots of twisting comets into the sky and I found a box of four single shot mortars by TNT (for $5) and these were very nice large breaks. My son also got me a couple of boxes of reloadable mortars by TNT which had peonies of different colors - good shells. A couple of days after getting back to Kansas I took the kids to the nearby town of Mulvane to get some fireworks (including rockets which my son loves and Oklahoma didn't seem to have anymore) We go to Mulvane because Derby only sells ground type items. (By the way we shoot the display items outside of Derby and do things such as fountains and sparklers at home which is alot of fun too). At Mulvane we picked up some rockets, some firecrackers, fountains, etc. I bought a multi shot cake called Land of the Free which turned out to be great. It had 16 to 19 shots ( I don't quite remember) that each had a nice large floral break of red, white and blue. This cost 9. 95 which I thought was very good. The night of the 3rd we went to my sisters house in Mulvane where we can legally display all of these items. My parents were there as well as a couple of families from my church and some relatives who happened to be in town. We all took turns lighting our various items which was alot of fun. I also had some items left from last year (Yankee Doodle Dandee was one very nice little repeater and large single tube called Red, White and Blue I believe. One of the guys there took 5 or six of his reloadable shells and twisted the fuses together to turn them into a large finale item which was quite cool. Anyway on the fourth we took our lawn chairs and watched Derby's public display which was great and then went back to Mulvane and finished off shooting our fireworks until midnight at which time they again become illegal until next year. I'm already counting the days. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* Well, I started the preparations by writing to my local newspaper, blasting their anti-fireworks propaganda as well as blasting the police and fire department for their ridiculous laws about fireworks (nothing is allowed where I live). I then fired off an e-mail to MSNBC. COM for their anti-fireworks propaganda that featured the chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and asked them to publish balanced articles about how to set fireworks off safely, not resorting to blowing up dolls with an M-1000 (which they actually did), proving the fireworks that are only used as high-explosive military attack devices are indeed very dangerous. They didn't prove anything bad about legal consumer fireworks, just military explosives, bootleg firecrackers, and professional display shells. After that, I sent the same letter with a few modifications to the CPSC, which they still haven't responded to yet. Anyway, despite that, and my age (15) my rich neighbor (he sold his company to excite for $49 million in 98') and I went out to buy as many fireworks as we could without going more than 20 minutes away. So we went to a tent and got at least 2 of everything. After spending $300, we went home. The idea was to purchase a lot of large fountains so that they could be set off quickly so that were all dome by the time the police arrive, instead of a bunch of dinky stuff that takes a long time to get all off. On the morning of the 4th, my friend and I were playing around with some of the extra stuff and set off a machine gun fountain (man, those things are dangerous!) It tipped over and shot up the street almost 100 yards! Around the time that our block party was coming to a close but before people mover out to see the big fireworks (we live on a golf course that puts on a display), my friend and I basically set out everything (most everything was a fountain), small things in front, bigger in the back. We lit starting in the front, and moved to the back, having 2-3 fountains going at a time. My favorites were the Black Cat Rat-A-Tat-Tat and the Blazing Reb, just because they shot so far up and used lots of crackering stuff with white, my favorite effect. At one point, we lit one of the Brothers '2000' fountains, (yes, I know its out of date, but we got 2 for one on them) and because it shoots somewhat horizontally, we opened an entire block (72 strips of 10) of jumping jacks and set them out where the sparks would land, causing lots of jumping jacks to go everywhere. So, everything is going good, we are having 2-3 fountains going at at time, and me and my friend (the only two official lighters) were standing behind a wall of fountains, waiting to light the next one. But then some smart ass punk kid who was like 12, brought out a strip of probably 300 crackers that he had bought and we had no clue he had them or that he wanted to light them. He must have assumed it was a free-for all, and lit them 5 feet from the crowd. My friend and I had no clue what he was doing, because we were standing behind the fountains, and he was in front. He lit them, and everything went everywhere, injuring 2 little kids. I quickly explained that I was not responsible for that, that I had no clue that he was doing that, and started to rail on him, but other parents took care of that for me. Well, that's my story! *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* This year, I decided to do something really different. NOTHING. Not one cake, no mortars, not even a roman candle. I thought it would be nice to just relax and let others do it this time. I live at the beach in Florida and just grabbed a lawn chair and sat in the sand from 9:00 to 10:15 PM. Our beach is straight for miles and fireworks light up the sky as far as you can see. The whole time I had this burning desire to put on my show! It killed me to see everyone display there fireworks and not to display mine, especially when your grown neighbors approach you with this boyish look asking "When does your display start?". I wasn't as relaxed as anticipated but saw some impressive displays that gave me several new ideas. So even without my grand finale, I still managed to learn something. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* on the forth of july morning I woke up about 9:13am and rollerbladed down to a fireworks stand and bought 85 dollars worth of fireworks. I bought 2 crackling cactus, 2 cuckoo fountains, 2 sizzler fountains, 2 purple rain candle, 1 majestic geyser fountain, a BIG 2000 millenium fountain, 4 assorted fountains, ground blooms, and I got done buying the fireworks I went home and see how I am gonna arrange my show. and them I went to sleep to pass the time. then my dad woke me up at 7:15pm and went to his friends house to see there new born baby and ate pizza and then at 8:49 we left to go to the strarosphere to watch a 20 minute fireworks display. it was fired by alonzo fireworks display co. they were fired off the roof top of the parking garages I was 1 floor under the fireworks and 30 feet close to the fireworks it was a windy day and dark clouds and they had to delay the fireworks show for 13 minutes and they turned off all of the lights and security cam and told us were not supposed to be up here and he just left and some guy was yelling at him to get the fuck out of here and leave us alone I was like holy shit that guy had guts to yell at the security guy. they started it with a set piece that said happy independence day they started firing they fired 1. 75 inch salutes and double break shells, and ring shells, and they they fired a barrage of comets then back to the chrysanthemums, and peonys, and palm trees, and then it went quite for 6 seconds, and then they fired like one of those screaming rattlers but they didnt crackle they exploded like salutes. and set off all of the cars alarms because the fireworks were fired in a closed space. I can even see the mortars and the finale racks. then they went back to firing normal shells for 5 minutes and went silent for 7 seconds they a barrag of titamium salutes, multi colored shells shot in to the air and I started to snap the picture of finale and then it ended and you can hear the rest of the car alarms go off. then my parents and I went home to fire my fireworks and we had to drive through alot of traffic. I started with the small stuff and worked my way up to the big ones. when I got home after my fireworks and check the camra and I asked my dad about the camra it had the # 3 on it and I asked did I take three pic or I had 3 left he opened the camra and closed it and I found out the camra didnt get the picture of the fireworks and I was pissed because I got some nice pictures and the camra didnt get them it was my greatest 4th of july. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* Our Independence day celebration took place right outside of San Francisco on the occupied beach of Pacifica, CA. As we drove up HWY 1 toward the beach we noticed a large concentration of fog and we were worried that it would hamper the evenings festivities. The fog seemed to get thicker as we drove closer but fortunately for us it was very clear by the time we reached our destination. We turned into the parking lot and there we were faced with a big ugly mobile police command post with a large contingency of Pacifica's finest. What to do? First we unloaded the children, blankets, and feeler (safe & sane) fireworks in order to test the waters. Although we did not have any illegal items, we were packing some heavy out of town commercials if you know what I mean. We all put on our safety glasses and staked out a nice warm spot in front of one of the many bonfires spread out along the shore. I insist that eye protection is worn in case some little shit throws some heavy ordinance our way, or in our bonfire. After burning up some sparklers, magic whips, and other safe n sane items acquired from the local stands I went back to the stash and dug out the Black Cat "Smokin" cake which turned out to be a pretty kick-ass daylight item after the initial failure to start. Let me explain, I positioned the cake by piling sand underneath so that it was positioned at about 30 degrees towards the ocean. Next I packed sand around the cake to lessen the risk of tipping, and whipped out some fancy butane crack torch I had purchased at the local stop and rob. The fuse started to burn as I casually walked away towards the crowd, and nothing, the damn thing just sat there doing nothing! I was upset to say the least, but not beaten. I returned to the cake after I felt it was safe to do so, dug away the sand from one side, and proceeded to tear away the paper until I was able to reveal the internal fuse work. Some teenager took an interest in what I was doing and came over to see if I needed any help. Fortunately he had an extended BBQ starting lighter with him since my crack torch was not working as advertised and with the help of his lighter I was able to light the first fuse that was visible. Several shots rung out followed by spinners and crackle, all ending with different colors of smoke. The crowd cheered and a few minutes later the same kid who helped me out came over and told me to lay low because the troopers were coming over. The police stood on the bank about 25 yards away, so I decided it was a good time to grab some tacos at the beach front Taco Bell. I came back about 15 minutes later with some snacks for the family, and some additional items retrieved from the "safe spot". I took it easy when starting up again by breaking out the tiny "Sunshine of Florida" fountains followed by a full size "Silent Night" multi effect fountain from Maverick. The beach action picked up as the final traces of the days sun faded away. The fountains were replaced by flying spinners, Mortars, and large explosions from the not to distant cliff house parties. I had made another trip to the safe spot, this time to retrieve some candles. I had taped a whole pack of 15 shot Magical Shot candles together and placed them in the hull of an already fired safe and sane fountain, angling my contraption so that it would fire directly over the water, ho humm. Next I broke out the Brothers 4 pack of multi effect candles which contained the Crazy Spades, Crazy Clubs, etc.. and sparked those puppies off, I would highly recommend them to any pyro. As the night progressed my bravery did as well, since we hadn't seen the foot soldiers in awhile I gathered up the courage to retrieve my Black Cat triple break mortars and remaining aerial cakes. Unfortunately as I turned the corner to enter the beach holding several contraband items in my arms I was facing Pacifica's finest about 15 yards from me telling people that the beach was closed, and that it was time to move on. I did an immediate about face slowly walking for about ten feet which turned into a panicked dash for the bushes closest to the car we had come in, when I got to the bushes I dumped the cakes, & mortar tube while cringing, and removed all other items from my pockets. I returned to the beach a few moments later, sans fireworks, to retrieve the group I had come with. Some wannabe gangsters around us were shouting vulgarities at the police and referring to them as Nazis, etc.. I thought that the police were being pretty reasonable, all thing considered, and for that I thanked them as I passed by. Hope your fourth rocked! Pyranicus Grandisimo PS: I was able to retrieve the hastily dumped items with no incident.. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* this 4th was really cool. We had a lot of fireworks to do. we put picolo petes in a 2 liter bottle and some cracling balls. when we lit it it went up with a boom and then had an awesome crackle effect. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* I did my job this fourth of July, I put out a grass fire myself. One of the small plane flying at Night misfired, a dn went into a grass field, I flung myslef over an 8 foot cyclone fence ( I have a 12 inch gash on my left thigh and two holes in my hand) and stomped out the fire. I got anm applause. That's what you do when you fck up with with fireworks, you don't run like a asshole, you stay there and fix your shit. It really pisses me off when dumbass, irresponsible kids fuck up, and then run and let the shit burn. I'm just happy I was able to get it out. Just letting you know how I feel about that kind of stuff. sure you can add it to show a model pyro :). In my opinion, no matter how far away it landed, you can put out any fire made by any fireworks before it grows too big. It's not that hard, you just run over to it, and stomp it out. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* This year was my first attempt at a finale board. In previous years, I fired my largest cakes last, but it always felt like the show just ran out of steam. Not this time! My board contained 22 cakes, fired in this order: 2 White Sands Missile Range (beautiful gold crossettes!) fired together. 2 Splendid Sky (Squirrel), 2 Crossette King (Far Ocean) and 1 Niagara Falls (Brothers) fired together. 2 Golden Swallow (Far Ocean), 2 Crossette King and 1 Niagara Falls fired together. 2 Golden Showers (Far Ocean), 1 Golden Swallow, 2 Twinkling Stars (Far Ocean), 2 Crossette King, 2 Niagara Falls and 1 Aladdin (Unique) fired together. They were timed with visco fuse to ensure there were no gaps in the action, with the Aladdin finishing a few seconds after everything else so everyone could appreciate its final shot. The whole board went in 90 seconds. Intense! The Aladdin is a foot-high European cake (the instructions on the label are in Danish), and would probably not be considered a 1. 4G cake here, based on its performance - its six 1. 5" tubes produced huge, very loud breaks, followed by the 3" center tube, which emitted a humongous twenty-foot-wide silver crackle mine with about 8 or 10 heavy titanium salutes layered on top. Awesome! (Actually, the Golden Swallow and Golden Showers cakes seemed awfully energetic for 1. 4G stuff, as well. Let's see what they look like next year!) The audience loved it! The only drawback was the thickening smoke that made it seem like fog had rolled in! Last word: Brothers stuff is well-designed, but ya gotta love those BIG Far Ocean cakes (Binary Star and Dinosaur, too! Woof!) !! *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* After basically a year of waiting the 4th of July finally came. This year was one of the best I ever had, since I took a trip to international fireworks in Pennsylvania. Being that I live in New York and virtually every type of Firework is illegal (that won't stop me!) This year I went to my girlfriend's house in Brooklyn and put the show on her block (even though her father is a fireman!). I had everything from firecrackers, repeaters, rockets, fountains and every thing else. The show lasted a little over 2 hours. I began at 9 and ended a little after 11 just before the poring rain. I started off with 100 string firecrackers (black cat), whistlers, morning glories and sparklers for the kids. Then I had shiny gadgets and birthday candles (long lasting spray. ) Then I did cuckoo fountains, airplanes, rattat at fountains, golden paddy, and jet helicopter. 100 yellow ribbons, strobes, Display shell rockets, pinball rockets, vortex rockets, Great Godzilla was the Best, also Hollywood trip was one of the best. 1388 celebration crackers. Of course that is nearly 1/2 of what I did too many to mention. There was about 120 people on the block, people commented how beautiful it was and the best that they have seen in years. The funny part is that the police didn't even come by, although the police helicopter came by. Thank God they didn't spot me! So for mayor Giuliani HA HA- 2001 turned out to be the best ever! I'm already starting on next year's show! *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* I started to get itch in april and finally bought fireworks may 19. I went to a &w fireworks in penn. and thought I was in 1960's again. I could not beleive 5.00 for mat 2.00 for bottle rockets gross. I could go on, however they made life little easy they sold this one assortmnet for 79.99 that have over 2500 pieces. I bot several cakes and and artillery shells. the box of 6 shells was only 6.00. I started my fourth by shooting bottle rockets, whaistlers and bombing plane with parachutes that kids loved. the only bad thing was threat of rain all day. however about 7.00 pm I had preshow display with some small rockets, dancing roses and jumbo parachutes. they were great. I finally started my show with opening of 1 shot thunder king aerial bomb. I then lit 96 shot colored pearl, a 25 shot gatling gun and 25 shot saturn at once this got crowd interested. I continued with 25 thunder king, I then shot off a mighty cobra great piece. then followed with several nice fountains. it started to rain so had to push show along. my son and 2 of his friends were lighting 4 cakes at time. we shot double barrel repeater 61 shots, 25 shot gattling gun and stars and stripes all at once. the crowd loved it and the more we shot more people came out to watch.. we ten shot artillery shells the best I think were ninja shells that were 1 3/4 in that I got in south carolina. I had got shells from brothers and cannon too, brother were nice and colorful with nice bang. I had somuch I can't put into words, I particularly liked 100 shot kung fu that I used in my finally I had 8 oz rockets going off almost at same time we had 2 pipes. my finally was great. we first lined up a 61 shot double barrel shot, 25 shot gattling gun 96 shot pearl and 100 shot kung fu show they were all lit about same time it looked beautiful while this a going on my son lit the closer 180 shot display barrage that shot little bottle rockets / it was nice but build up didn't meet my expectations. the super artillery shells from cannon were very nice big break lots of color. I hope didn't write to much but this was the best forth I had since my passed away 4 years ago. I hope you had great fourth too. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* Hi everyone. We are the Hancock family of Owasso, Oklahoma. We have had a fireworks stand now for five years. We started selling fireworks after LOVING fireworks for many years. We try to only sell the "best of the best" of consumer class c fireworks. We test everything we sell, and if it doesn't pass - out it goes! Our stand (or rather our tent) was open for 11 days this year and we had a great season. It's great fun to see the repeat customers and hear their stories of fun and fireworks. It's also nice when they have especially enjoyed something we recommended to them. We specialize in selecting just what they want - display items, items for kids, items for teens, etc. Having our own stand also allows us to have quite a party of our own! We shoot off lots and lots of fireworks. This time of year makes me a "favorite aunt" and a "favorite friend" because I end up giving LOTS of stuff away to my family and people we know. Share the joy right? We invite just about everyone we know over for the fourth. Our stand is located in our backyard so we can stay open while we visit with everyone. We had about 24 people come this year - a small crowd compared to the past. We always supply the burgers, dogs, and chips, and everyone helps out by bringing something. Everyone brings their lawn chairs and they eat and wait for the show to start. The kids do their own fireworks - day parachutes, firecrackers, smoke balls, missiles, etc. and run to Aunt Jeanne when they run out of stuff to shoot! Of course I oblige by supplying more. And I always stress safety! Though the boys always come up with something new... Does pyromania run in the family? Well, here are the best of the fireworks that we had at our own celebration. I look at fireworks from the buyer and the seller viewpoints. Would I myself pay X amount of dollars for this particular item? And can I (with good conscience) sell this item for X amount of dollars. I will start with smaller items that we like and work my way up to the big stuff! 1. Jade Flower - This is a classic. A small fountain that is long lasting and like it's name indicate is a beautiful green. Low cost and pretty. 2. Black Cat's Golden Fan - A fan shaped gold colored fountain. This pretty thing lasted quite a while. The fan shape made for a unique look. 3. Parachute Battalion - This was great. It is made for daytime and we waited to late - so it was dark when we shot this item off. It littered the sky (and eventually the ground) with parachutes. LOVED IT! 4. Cloud Dragon - Another classic. Seemed much shorter than in previous years. But still great with those wonderful silver twisters and whistles. Doesn't last a long time - but it's cheap! 5. Black Cat's Garden Party - This little fountain blew us away. It was just like the energizer bunny - it keeps going and going and going! Had seven tubes and seven different and lovely effects. 6. Havana Heat - Another great fountain. Lasts a really long time and is very pretty. I am not the world's greatest fountain fan.... but this is a nice one. 7. Colorful Parachutes (19 shot) - Another beautiful parachute aerial that is made for night! Parachute have a colored flare attached and it is quite spectacular to see the tons of parachutes it fills the sky with! 8. Fourth of July Parade - I am always amazed by this small multiple aerial. It is absolutely beautiful. We always recommend this one to our customers. It just cannot be beat for the price! With red, silver and blue bursts it makes for a great show. Always a crowd pleaser. Next year I want to shoot several at once! 9. Clustering Cicada and Reporting Red 61 - Both are old favorites at our stand. Very similar in performance with whistling twisters and colored balls, and loud explosions. Reporting Red breaks of course into red. Clustering cicadas break into more greens.... 10. Explosions in Blue - Love this one! Wonderful gold comets that burst into blue explosions! 11. Explosions on Jupiter - Love this one too! More golden comets that explode into colored stars and twisters. WOW! 12. Golden Rhapsody - Not available anymore where I live. TOO BAD! It is a great multiple aerial. Beautiful golden comets that burst into great gold explosions. ONE OF MY FAVORITES! 13. Vegas at Night - New to our stand this year, it came recommended by the guys at the warehouse! Get this one for sure - it is loud, fast, and very colorful. Got a round of applause from the family! 14. Black Cat's Out of Sight - We will buy more of these babies next year - to sell and to shoot ourselves. The comets from this aerial would shoot up fast and high, then hesitate, then take off fast and high again - out of sight! We loved it!!!! 15. California Illegal - I don't know about the illegal part, but this was one awesome aerial. It was a little more expensive than some - but well worth it for it's long lasting display and fantastic flying fish. Once again, We loved it!!!! 16. Jammin' - Tried this one simply as a lark. Turned out to be a new favorite for us! Lasts a really long time and goes very high with beautiful bursts of colors. 17. Wild Bear (Wild Boar) - If you like great spinners you will like this one. It was loud - bright - and had great spinning UFO's. Loved it! 18. Killer Alligator - Similar to Wild Bear - Bright comets and twisters that explode in great colors with a delightful whirring sound. Loved it! 19. Incredible - Described to be "not for the timid". YIKES! It was short and disappointing. Hated it! 20. Shoot the Works - Three large cakes fused together. This was very pricey - but good! If the distributor would come down on the price it would be a more popular item. For the current price... too short. 21. Black Cat Backyard Display and Black Cat Sky Writer - I was a little disappointed in these items too. They were pricey to sell. In spite of the triple, and angled shots I probably won't buy them again for the current price. If they were about $4 less - I would. 22. Floral Display Shell - This super huge item needs lots of overhead room. The seven floral shots went very high - equal to single shot mortars - but much much prettier. 23. Bulls Rule - One of the new Brother's Heavyweight Items. Pricey but WOW! This one had a little bit of everything - and all at once! We sold out on their Flower Power so we didn't get to shoot it. But Bull's Rule will be a definite YES for next year! 24. Triple Double Mortar Shells - This was new this year also. It was 24 mortar shots - all as the name implies - doubles and triples. For an "as close as you can get to professional" show - you've got to have this. The mortar itself really needs to be made of PVC though - ours had a rough spot in the tube which kept some shells from reaching their maximum height. We had two other customers say their mortars developed holes and had to be repaired. BUT in spite of all that - this is a MUST HAVE. Beautiful double and triple breaks with lots of different effects. The evidence of what a great time we had was all over the lawn the next morning. We have a one acre back yard and the use of our lawn sweeper can speed the pickup time up. Great weather, fun family, good friends, and beautiful fireworks. Who could ask for more? Until next year... *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* It all started when me and my family went on vacation to florida, on the way back from our trip we passed through the great land of fireworks, Tennessee. When we stopped, we went into a tnt fireworks superstore and they had your basic retail prices which I never settle for, so I decided to leave my family at the store and take a walk across the street to what I was really looking for, a small private fireworks tent. The prices there were amazing 50% off of everything, and the prices werent even jacked up!! I decided that this was great so went ahead and bought my favorite types of fireworks, rockets. I bought a rocket assortment of 2 to 6 ounce rockets for only 14$. I then proceeded to buy a couple additional packs of rockets and two saturn missile batteries. (25 shot) This not being enough I bought a 6 pack of prime roman candles. This was almost my lightest year only buying 30$ worth of fireworks, but I managed to have an amazing amount of safe fun with my friends. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* This Fourth of July season I was involved in two substantial displays. The first display was fired on June 30th and was choreographed to live symphony music. Set up for this display began on June 25th with setting up all the mortars. The whole first day was spent getting the mortar racks in order and labeled with their device numbers. There were approximately 1500 mortars/shells in this display ranging in size from 3" to 12". On June 26th the product truck arrived early at the mortar field. The first thing we did was inventory the shells and place them at their various mortars according to the device numbers. This took most of the second day since all of the shells were choreographed for specific effects at points within the music (like painting the sky with brocade crowns during Beethoven's 5th). Toward the end of the day we did drop all the shells (except the 10's and 12's) and begin fusing. This was also an interesting day because thunderstorms were popping up all around us during the afternoon. But what really got our attention is when we watched a tornado form and touch down less than a half mile away from us. We did pack it in for the day at that point. Nothing was damaged. On June 27th we managed to get the mortar field all fused and all igniters put in place. This was quite an accomplishment since we were again working around rain and storms. Part of my responsibility this day was to double-check work done so far to make sure all devices (racks and shells) were fused correctly (including time delays). On June 28th we began wiring the mortar field. The system we used required us to run lots of 24 gauge two wire (about 15, 000 feet) and copper ground wire. Each rack (and often individual shells) had a wire pulled to it. Since the wire is in pairs (i. e., two wire) one of the pair is connected to one device (rack of shells or individual shell) and the other is ran to another device. These wires are then connected to a predetermined circuit on a phone company type "punch block". (Each punch block has 50 connection locations. Each punch block is connected to our control panel via a 500 ft fifty wire cable. For this display we had four punch blocks for our mortar fields and one for the ground portion of the display. ) To minimize potential problem we had four of our crew working on wiring and three putting igniters into our ground items. On this day I was responsible for punching the wires into the correct location on the punch blocks. Our week continued like a broken record, again having us battle rain off and on during the afternoon. By the end of the day we had the main lines wired and tested (at the punch blocks) ; all circuits had continuity. On June 29th we finishing wiring the rest of the mortar field and got all our ground items placed in their spots. (One of my personal favorite items in our ground show were the eight 300 shot titanium salute cakes). We had planned to wire all the ground show items but we were again stopped by heavy rain, lightning and thunder. June 30th, the day of the show, we started at 7:00 a. m., hoping to make up for time lost due to the week's intermittent thunderstorms. Part of our crew (myself and three others) began wiring the ground show. Another three of the crew dropped the 10" and 12" shells (we always wait until the day of the show to drop the big guns, less chance of having them get water damaged). The final two guys were putting up our 60 ft high, 300 ft long waterfall of fire (another favorite of mine). Our ground show items are spread out and arranged so that each row (of cakes, candles, mines, comets, etc. ) covers an area approximately 500 ft long. We use a lot of wire on our ground show. This year we had eight racks of three inch comets in groups of two 150 ft apart, angled to cross each other in the sky. (This was a wiring nightmare, but the effect during the display made it worth it. ) It took us till about 3:00 p. m. to finish wiring the ground show. By this time a large number of people were being entertained by live acts at the grand stand and participating in many of the other day activities. As for our waterfall, it was just before 3:00 p. m. when the guys finished putting it up. At around 3:15 p. m. a heavy rain set in for about an hour. Unfortunately, waterfalls of fire do not like rain. Even though sun came back out and it got really hot following the rain, nonetheless about 2/3 of the waterfall was too heavily damaged to work during the display. Around 5:00 p. m. we were finally about to do a full systems check. The ground show tested 100% good. In the mortar field we had a half dozen circuits that tested bad. By 7:00 p. m. we had all the problems fixed, we got the clear on the weather (no more rain) and we pulled all the plastic off the mortars and the ground show items. One more round of testing at 8:00 p. m.. (post plastic pulling). All tested 100%. Some time during the day the communication system between our control panel and the orchestra was installed. At 8:00 p. m. we also tested this part of the system. Our button pusher (at the control panel) and the cue giver (reading the music at the orchestra) finalized how cues would be given. Now all we had to do was wait till show time, 9:45 p. m. I don't know if you have ever experienced the final hour or so before a big display, but the tension builds until you get the cue to push that first button and, then, boom boom boom. As the sky lights up your tension melts away. This show was a huge success, the 60, 000 to 70, 000 people loved the early effect of the crossing comets as the symphony began playing 2001 Space Odyssey. I was stationed at the control panel area and was directly under the comets as they crossed. It truly was beautiful. The Willows, the brocade crowns, the glittering butterflies, the bees, the crossettee, and the salutes all added to beauty of the display. After the show we rolled up our cables, packed up our control panels, dug out our 10 and 12 inch mortars, loaded the racks back on the truck and set everything to the site of the next show. We finished cleaning up around 2:00 a. m. July 1st. At 8:00 a. m., the crew began unloading the truck and setting up the racks for our display scheduled for July 4th. This next show was my show, I was the crew chief (2nd year as crew chief for this show). This show was slightly smaller then the previous show with only approximately 1200 shells. This show was choreographed to a live 300 member choir and orchestra. I'll skip most of the set up details, though I will mention we did not have any rain during this set up and things went quickly and smoothly. With no rain to slow us down, on July 4th all we really had left to do was drop the 10s and 12s and test all our circuits. I should mention the day was also extremely hot. During our first test of the mortar field we found that we had continuity (a completed circuit) to a 10 inch shell that had not yet been wired in. We traced the problem to one of our cables and promptly gave the 10 inch shell a new circuit. Most of the day was uneventful. We had some extra 3 inch shells and racks (with 24 mortars each) so we read through the "script" and found places for them. We also added three (more) 6 inch salutes into the show. Around 5:00 p. m. we tested the system again and found, for whatever reason, five circuits (one connected to a 12 inch shell, one to a 10 inch shell and one to a rack of five 8 inch shells, plus two others) had dropped out and were testing as open circuits. I moved the devices to the last five open positions I had on the punch block and we were back in business. The guy pushing buttons for me was new to that position. He was a bit nervous (but did great) and kept redoing his button to device map. At 9:00 p. m., myself and one of the crew went to the mortar field to review our back up plan of how we were going to fire the show if something went wrong. By the time we got back to the "shooters hut" (a small structure the sponsors build for us each year to house our control panel and provide us with some safety during the show) my button pusher and his helper were testing the field again. They announce device number 35 was not working. I politely told them to stop testing because we were out of time to fix anything. With that I reached through the window of the shooters hut and pushed the button for device number 35 (real hard) and we got a good reading again. All testing came to a halt. At 9:30 p. m., we got word there was going to be about a 10 minute delay before the show began. At 9:36 p. m. we got the go and pushed the first button sending up 12 titanium salutes and 12 assorted Peony's. The crowd roared and the choir and orchestra began playing "Fanfare of the Common Man. " This tune was choreographed to mainly colored comets and horse tails ending in a barrage of 3 inch salutes. Next came a medley of patriotic tunes starting with "Grand Ole Flag. " We had a number of red, white, and blue shells and red, white and blue mines choreographed to this tune. We also fired red, white, and blue 300 shot Colorful worlds (ground cakes). The next tunes were "This is my Country, This Land is My Land, and America the Beautiful". "This Land is my Land" ended with an 8 inch crackling coconut tree shell that filled the sky. "America the Beautiful" began with a 10 inch Brocade Crown/with tail (one of my all time favorite shells). After "America the Beautiful " came the "Armed Forces Medley, " begun with a series of 6 inch salutes and ended with a red, white, and blue 12 inch shell that filled the sky. The tunes also included "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Stars and Stripes. " At the end of Stars and Stripes we had another 12 inch red, white, and blue shell. This lead into our grand finale which started with a rack of 20 three inch salutes followed by a rack of 6 six inch salutes and eight 49 shot quick spring salutes (ground show cakes), a host of 3 inch shells ending in three 10 inch shells and one 12 inch shell to paint the night sky. People are still coming up to me and telling me how much they enjoyed this show. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* I awoke early on the forth, with much anticipation. The long weeks of looking at all the stuff and not being able to light it all off was hard. Around noon I heard some popping in the street so I grabbed my bangers and headed out the door. After I had destroyed some coffee cans and made some good noise I headed back in to get ready for the evening, and to look at all the stuff again. My family and I went back to our old house, since the city we live in has outlawed fireworks of any kind. Our old neighbors said they were having some people over and invited us to come. When we arrived I brought out my stuff and the excitement grew inside of me. As it got darker we started of with sparklers for the kids and then moved to fountains. The silvery cones lit up the whole yard and the ratta tat tats made some good noise and effects. Another guy lit some stuff that he had purchased at the local stand and there was no comparison, very little height or power. We kept the show going for quite a long time trying different fountains and doing multiples at the same time. I was really amazed at how well all the fireworks performed. We then moved to the mortars, we had two tubes going and the sky looked great. Me and my neighbor both dropped a double break shell into our tubes and lit the fuses at the same time. Bang Bang they shot up into the air the first broke into purple and then silver and then nothing, we stood there looking up and then thump you heard the second shell hit the roof and then fall to the ground, we all scattered but luckily it didn't pop, thank god for that dud. The rockets raced into the air and broke with great color, we used a blow torch to light multiple rockets at the same time, that worked great. The night was going great and there were about eight of us lighting things off so there was always something going. We broke out the Ariel repeaters and they looked great. We did run into a problem one of the guys laid one on its side, he saw the holes on the top but said afterward that since the fuse was on the side that he thought that that was the top. The party went from oohs and awes to oh s##t. The first shot hit the side of the house and exploded, it then spun and launched the next one under a car off went the alarm, the third shot hit my wife in the back as we were running away, small cut/burn nothing too bad, thank god. It fired off three more shots sending people running for cover before it righted its self some how and then continued with the other nineteen or so shots left, we were lucky no one got seriously hurt and made sure that every one knew what the were lighting after that. The party got back into swing and we continued to light stuff off until after eleven, The kids were tired and with all the different stuff we really had a great time. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* I hope your 4th was a good one. I've had a very busy fireworks season, at least for me. So far I've done three 1.3G shows as well as our yearly family consumer show. It started in April when I attended my second trainers school for 1.3G fireworks. Our town has a yearly festival on Memorial day weekend and last year I talked them into a small fireworks show, they liked it so much they wanted another this year. This year I planned and scripted the entire show and with the help of my brother and some others set it up and then fired it electronically. It was just a small show about 180 3" & 4" shells and about a dozen various BIG cakes. I was a little nervous about this years show (as I am about every fireworks show I do) but this year my wife was expecting a baby. She was due the first part of June which we were sure the baby was going to be early and come the same day as my show. Although my wife doubted my commitment to her and the baby I assured her that there was no way I would miss the fireworks.........I mean the birth!! Here's how it went: May 25th: Today we make the trip to South Dakota to get the fireworks for our 1.3G show. My wife assures me she'll be fine, so I go. It's a 7-8 hour round trip. I call about every hour to see if anything's happening. No problems at home. Our biggest problem this day is getting all the racks, equipment and product stuffed into and onto my van. We get home in the late afternoon and start sorting our shells for the next days show. No baby yet. May 26th: SHOW DAY! The day does not start off well. The weatherman had been predicting 80 degree weather and sunny. It's in the 60's which might not be so bad except for the rain and the wind. Still, people are pouring into town despite the chilly weather to see the parade that is in the morning. We loaded our calcium carbide cannon into the back of my pickup and put on signs about the fireworks show and concert that night. For some reason the cannon will not fire however the signs still work and lots of people who did not know about the show now plan on attending. To continue the theme of the day sometime right before the parade the entire town loses power, so the few restraunts and shops we have in town are making due in the dark. Apparently a squirrel somewhere was tired of his existence and decided to turn himself into a crispy critter by playing in a transformer and preceeded to knock out power to half of the county. We eventually get back power that afternoon but the rain still threatens and delays our setup. It gradually improves and we start our setup. We spend the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening securing racks of tubes, squibbing shells, and connecting wires. I start to remember what someone wrote about how much work 1.3G fireworks are. The works continue without a break right thru supper as the outdoor concert begins. Not the band we originally planned on having, their lead singer was put in the hospital 7 days before and these are the fill-ins and they've got just a little to much country twang in there music for my taste. Finally about 15 minutes before we shoot were ready to test for continuity (not how I planned for my day to go) We were using a 200 shot board and three 50 cue rails. One rail shows no continuity so we have hook another ground wire. 10 minutes to go. I decide to shoot a warning shot to warm up the crowd that's supposed to be a 3" salute, instead it looks remarkably like a 3" gold willow, better switch cable 1 and 2 around so every thing will go as planned. That done we put on our bunker gear and finally stop to take a breath just one we still have to go over our firing order. 5 minutes to go it's almost dark enough, can the fireworks save the day?? The band stops playing and we fire up 2 big salutes and follow with a 52 shot Poisonous Spider big gold spinners violently throw sparks in the air and explode into white and green stars. We follow with some 4 inch shells and another salute. after 3-4 minutes of various 3" and 4" shells we hit them with our showstopper 8X5 brocade crown cakes on angles topped with 4" gold willows and silver and gold crowns the sky is streaming with lights. We resume another 3 to 4 minutes of 3" & 4" shells and go right into our first finale, the same as last years, 150 shot Happy Stars cake breaks HARD and LOUD into gold tails that release tons of gold crackle MEGA INTENSE!! We wait 10 seconds to lull the crowd to sleep and as we here their cheers we launch into our second finale Storm in Desert squirming comet heads shot on angles to loud reports and a 36 shot 2.5" 1/2 color 1/2 salutes ring down the hill to the crowd below. But wait a minute, it seems like there should have been more....OH NO!! I forgot a cue!! after another 10 second pause we hit them with our third finale. 150 shot color crackling chrysanthemum (like happy stars with color), with a 25 shot 3-inch multicolor and a 2.5 " 36-shot silver tailed salutes streaking up the middle. Finally at the end all we can hear is a chorus of car alarms and a frenzied crowd chanting "ONE MORE TIME! ONE MORE TIME!!" I am on a fireworks HIGH! Fireworks have saved the day!! But still no baby. June 1st: My brother is finds out he will be getting a show donated to his for his towns festival in late June more later!! June 5th: I start my vacation to day in anticipation of the baby being born and then a trip to Missouri to load up. We have a vendor we like to do business with because we get a good percentage off so a cake like Brothers' Falcon Rising would cost us $4.00 or less instead of the $10-$12 we normally would pay. I usually go early in June to scout around for different products and buy a little and then we plan out what we want then make the big haul a week later. June 15th: Vacation is over no baby and no fireworks!! I'm beginning to fear that all the good stuff will be gone! June 18th: I'm called away from work and barely make it in time to the hospital see my new daughter being born!! Mother and daughter doing fine. My brother visits that night and we make plans to go to Missouri a couple nights later as the next weekend is his donated 1.3G show for his town festival. June 21st: We head to Missouri for fireworks a family tradition (there's allot of stories from the past here but I'm running out of time and this things long enough) MAJOR problem our main supplier is not open on this evening and we have to scramble, we find another dealer to give us a volume discount but not near what we've had in the past. Not a bad haul but was hoping for more. June 23rd: My brothers show which was donated by the supplier all he had to do is come up with a permit, insurance money and tax. This was done in hopes they could get a yearly event going. He has about 110 3"&4" shells and 24 5" shells we use the same equipment as at my 1.4G show and we will hand light the 5 inch shells we also have a 100 shot Spring Song and a 100 shot Big Eight for a finale. Set up went great nice weather and plenty of help. We even have time to pop of the cannon a few times and hand fire a few 3 inch shells to warm up the crowd. Show time comes the it's going well the shells are great and the 5" are incredible one even breaks into a huge multicolored butterfly. WOW!! Then half way thru one rail goes dead we continue to fire a few 5 inch shells while we switch out the lines nothing works!! Finally we bite the bullet and they begin to hand light after about a ten minute delay, talk about chaos. I end up watching with my finger on the button to the last rail with continuity that has the finale cakes. I cringe while I hope no one blows a limb off. Then on my brothers signal I hit the button for the finale cake and WOOF! this things a DOG. Very disappointing. We would have been better off with our Brothers Heavyweight cakes. Oh well, it was free !! The crowd still liked it and wants to do it again next year. June 24th: We head to South Dakota for a mini vacation and, you guessed it, more fireworks!! June 26th: I make the rounds and pick up some great products, by Brothers, Hot Shot Fireworks, Black Cat, and WINDA (I love WINDA's labels for there fireworks) They like me so much at the Black Cat store they gave me a free hat!! June 27th: I take the family fireworks shopping and return to the Black Cat store again. My wife stays in the van to feed the baby and I take my other 2 kids in with orders from my wife to restrain my self. But when I return with another new hat It's obvious I went a little overboard. July 3rd: I'm off to another 1.3G show in Nebraska. It's a $12,000 show. We spend all day wiring about 500 3",4",5",6",8", and 10" shells as well as about 40 cakes and some 3" willow candles for the finale. We put on our bunker gear and get a good seat for the show and tape it. It goes for 30 minutes and the shells are great! Then the finale starts with a willow barrage (this will definitely be in my show next year) then is followed by four 100 shot Thunderstorm cakes (like Happy Stars with some big reports added) then by a barrage of all red, then all green, then all blue ponies with report mines these were shot from four different stations so the sky was filled with bursts. Then the followed up with the 4" finale cakes and silver tailed salutes and various other shells completely blanketing the sky with color and light and sound. Incredible! After the show we clean up, one 8" shell fell to the ground unexploded pyros worst nightmare the fire department waters it down as well as the spent cakes. We start to load the cakes after a safe time interval into the back of a big trailer pulled by a pickup as we approach one of the stations we here a strange whooshing sound and as we try to figure it out we notice our feet are becoming submerged in water. The young lady driving the truck had accidentally driven over a large sprinkler head and broken it off and water stream was now power washing the bottom of the trailer. The best part was all the locals had gone home so there was no one to turn off the water!!! We filled the trailer with the used cakes and pulled ahead to reveal a beautiful 60 foot high water fountain and the crowd thought the show was over. Very Funny!! July 4th:Slept in. Did some planning for my 1.4G show. That night we did some kid fireworks and watch some stuff from the neighbors. Found a new fireworks activity.... strobe dancing. Light a strobe such as a Brothers Brilliant Rays about 30 feet from the house, while its flashing step in between the house and the strobe at a safe distance and your body casts a giant shadow on the wall that changes position between each strobe... then watch your kids climb up the side of the house when the flash, pop, and loud crackle come at the end of the Brilliant Rays. Hilarious!! My son shot his Black Cat Aircraft Carrier pretty neat little spinners flying every where with fountains. My daughter shot a very nice angle fountain called Golden Palace (Brothers??) lots of nice gold silver and crackle big spread. July 6th: Hauled a big load of fireworks and equipment to my parents place in the country July 7th:Head to my parents place at noon as per usual not enough time to set up all the fireworks we've bought. Its warm and muggy but theres a nice breeze. Then it stopped and the heat index went up to 124 degrees. (YUCK!!) We fired electronically for the second year using a system like the one in your Pyro magazine. Thank you to the gentleman in that article for all his help with this system. We have also discussed building a system like the one in your latest video and have had contact with that gentleman. We decide to shoot the shells with a long fusee and my brother will wear his bunker gear. Back to the show, as I said before we ran out of time and had allot of product left over. The shells were shot at random the best shells are Excalibur& Beihei Rambo Kid (biggest breaks) and Black Cat ProMag (best special effects) We had 12 triple break shells planned for the finale (Black Cat Cannonballs) but we forgot to load then in the tube and went to get them in the middle of the show to load and then the fusee went out so that screwed up our shells for the second part of our show. Here's what we did shoot and what I thought. 1.Led off with some Beihei Rambo Kid Shells over 2 Millenium Bugs and 4 Saturn Missile batteries (shells good one bug didn't go off) I wanted busy and noisy might have been ok if both bugs would have gone 2. followed with 3 Independence Days (mines) and 2 Hollywood trips (I was going for a red white and blue over and under effect turned out ok.) 3. two "Go Big Purple" (Hot Shot Fireworks) (supposed to be big purple breaks had some purple mostly gold tailed breaks not bad) 4.two "Channel Chaser" (loud high whistle with tracer like streak to pop with some stars very high) 5. two-Killer Alligator, 1 Hurricane Mitch, 1 Drinker of the Wind (not the best mix of cakes lots of spinners with sprays) 6. three DreamLand cakes by WINDA (I like these allot nice crossette breaks of white or was it gold still very neat and different crowd liked allot and the price was right breaks not as large as Desperate Attempt 7. three Wild Boar cakes (planned more here but ran out of time to set up still funny to hear those whistles) 8. two Super Knights and Great Godzilla (Godzilla did not fire wiring mistake, Super Knights is one of my favorites I like the swirling comet and it lasts a long time) 9. two Laser Battle (similar to Channel Chaser) 10. three Black Cat Willows cakes (nice gold willows long streaming tails) two Ape Man (manufacturer??)cakes also inadvertently fired her also good palm tree breaks not bad 11. two Black Cat Brocade Crown cakes (like BC Willows only little higher thicker tails but maybe not as long lasting) 12. two Beyond 2000 cakes and one Millenium Festival (lots of crackle and the festival for a little color nice combo love the ten shot finale) 13. two Black Cat Heart Stopper big angled cakes (best item of the night?? the crowd thought so lots of oohs. synchronized single colored or crackle breaks on angles very impressive 14.two America Invincible and three Red, White and Blue Salutes (got this idea from your video great patriotic breaks some on angles and those great whistling comets, these cakes belong together both are on my favorites list. 15. two New Era Celebration, and one Desperate Attempt (lots of variety on the New Era pretty stuff and Desperate Attempt has great big crossette breaks 16. three Brothers Heavy Weight cakes Blond Joke, Saturday Night Special, and Hicktown Heaven (lots of stuff mines breaks crackle pretty blue breaks hard to sort it all out. 17. Big finale 1.4g Battle of colors & Thunder King (LOUD!) & Flower Thunder also two Whistling Shells, two A Little Green, a Cajun Pageant, and a Firing Squad (pretty intense the thunder kings are so loud compare to the other stuff Good Show! Here's what's left (Black Cat: cakes Color Warp, shells ProMag) (Brothers: Wild West, Tigers Roaring , Killer Alligator, Casino Chip Clatter, Pot-O-Gold, Falcon Rising) (Cannon: Exotic Mash) (WINDA: A Little More, Iron Jaguar, Metal Dino, Mercurial Bees,) July 8th: clean up I have video of most of these events that came out pretty good. Hope you found this worth reading! *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* My 4th of July season was quite busy. I made many purchases of pyrotechnic devices well before the month of June came around. During the month of May I started making some actual firework purchases. Then, the first weekend in June I made my annual trip down to Missouri and purchased approximately $1100.00 in fireworks. So, at this point in time I already had about $1500.00 in fireworks to use for 2 small shows and my big 4th of July show in my backyard. On June 16th, I put on my first small show of the season for my wife's relatives. They have about 5 acres of land out from the city limits which is ideal for a fireworks show. This show was very small with about 14 class C cakes and a few class B shells and cakes. I started the show with a 25 shot air raid followed by some 2" titanium salutes and one Super Rocket. If you don't have any Super Rockets, you need to get some since they attain great height and finish with terrific bursts of color. The price for them are well worth the experience. Anyhow, I followed that up with 14 class C cakes ranging from some of the Brother's Heavy Weight items to such things as "100 yellow ribbons", "red, white, and blue salute", and a "North and South". Since I had no help firing that particular show, I setup two firing forts and had two bins of fireworks to supply both firing forts. Once the last two class C cakes started firing I ignited my finale remotely. I had a 50 shot Thunder King and 25 shot Flower Thunder both hooked up to two separate electronic matches which went to this RadioMatch device from Evergreen Instruments. The second part of my finale was a bin with fifteen 1.75" tubes and four 2" tubes loaded with all kinds of different display and salute shells which were all quickmatched together and hooked up to one electric match which was connected to another RadioMatch device. The last part of my finale was a 100 shot Colorful Salute cake which was a class B cake that I acquired. That particular cake was electric matched to the second Radiomatch device, also. With four presses of buttons, my entire finale started to ignite. I was very pleased with this small finale that I had setup for this particular show. The entire show was fired inside of 12 minutes. Later during the month of June, I was able to acquire about another $1000 of class B material. Now, I was all set for my second small show along with my big 4th of July show. My second show was set to fire at my sisters house on the lakefront for her pre-4th of July party on June 30th which included mostly friends of the family. I had a much tighter firing area since this show was taking place in a residential neighborhood. So, I took much stronger safety precautions to avoid any injuries or fires! I had a combination of twenty class C and small class B cakes glued down onto 1x12 planks. This would make firing the cakes much easier and this time I had another partner to help me out. We started firing each cake one by one off of the planks in a round robin style until we both ignited our last cake on the planks. Our last cakes included a 50 shot Thunder King and 36 shot Master of Orion which were both small class B cakes. While these two cakes were firing, I ignited my finale which was setup on the lakefront. The finale consisted of two class B green roman candles quickmatched together and had an electric match attached to the quickmatch. The next item of the finale was a bin filled with twenty 1.75", 2", and 3" shells attached to one piece of quickmatch which was attached to another electric match. The third piece of the finale was a "25 shot Red, White, and Blue Colorful Bouquet" class B cake which was connected to electric match. The fourth piece of the finale was a "25 shot Red Explorer" cake which was another class B cake connected to another electric match. The fifth piece of the finale was a "36 shot 2.5 inch titanium salute cake" which was connected to electric match and of course this was class B material, also. The last piece of my finale was a rack of 1.75", 2", 2.5", and 3" shells which were all quickmatched together and connected to an electric match. All of these six electric matches from my finale were connected to three different Radiomatch devices. Therefore, I just started pressing the remote control buttons from button one through button six until the entire finale was ignited. This finale was even better than my last since there was lots of color and noise in the sky. The entire show took about 15 minutes to fire. My last show of the season was my annual 4th of July show which takes place in my backyard each and every year. This year was no exception and since I had lots of class C and class B material to fire, I started putting the show together on Sunday, July 1st. First of all, I decided which cake would be used where in my show. Next, I knew that I was going to have two of my pyro buddies helping me fire the show. So, I glued down all of my cakes onto twelve 1x12 planks. Each shooter would have four planks which consisted of 20 class C and class B cakes. Each plank was about 6 feet long and had 5 cakes spaced about one foot apart. I covered each fuse except the fuse on the first cake so that we would not have any pre-ignition of the other cakes. All of this was accomplished by the evening of the 3rd of July. So, the morning of the 4th was spent getting everything together for our 4th of July party. The party started at 1pm and friends and family started appearing shortly thereafter. I still had a few other firework things to finish up, so I slipped back into my garage to fuse up the start of my show and the finale. The start of the show consisted of three different bins. Two bins consisted of three class B green Roman candles. The third bin had a combination of fourteen different 1.75", 2", and 3" color and mine shells. Each of these three separate bins had their items quickmatched together and had a piece of visco fuse at each end of the quickmatch to light. I used visco fuse to give us time to get back to the planks before these items started firing. Next, all of the planks were ready for use, so I moved onto the finale items. The first finale item was a bin with two four inch shells quickmatched together with a piece of visco fuse attached to the quickmatch. Once again, this would give me time to get far away from these two bombs before they detonated. The rest of the finale consisted of a "25 shot explorer" cake and a "100 shot colorful crossette" cake which both would have an electric match attached to them and would be connected to one of my Radiomatch devices later. The next set of finale items were a "36 shot Celestial Beauty" cake and a "36 shot Titanium Salute" cake which both would have electric matches attached and would be connected to another Radiomatch device later. Lastly, I had one rack of ten 2.5" mortar tubes filled with colorful break shells and another rack of a combination of twelve 1.75", 2", 2.5", and 3" mortar tubes filled with colorful and salute shells. All of the shells in each rack were individually quickmatched together and would be connected to one electric match per rack and tied into my third Radiomatch device later. Once all of this was accomplished, I spent time with people at the party. Once and a while throughout the day, I would send up a 3" salute shell just for kicks. Boy, those shells really rock a neighborhood. They attain real great altitude and just throw out a deafening boom when they reach their pinnacle. Well, 8:00pm arrived and the sun started to sink in the sky. That meant it was time to start setting up the show for a sunset detonation. I did some last minute videotaping of each item in my garage. Then, I had alot of people at the party help carry out all of my bins and planks to the exact location where I wanted them set down. Once all of the material was transferred from my garage out to the blasting sites, I started securing each finale item to the ground with cinder blocks, rebar stakes, and sand bags. I did not want to take any chances of some items tipping over during the show whatsoever! Once everything was securely fastened, I attached the elctric matches to each item and connected all six electric matches to my three Radiomatch devices. I made one last check of everything before videotaping the final setup and giving some last minute videotaping instructions to one of my friends who was going to videotape the show. Now, the show was ready to be fired, so we just waited for the sky to get completely dark. At 9:25pm the show started! Each one of us was assigned one of the first three bins. Once those were ignited, we all proceeded back to the planks where the remainder of the show would be fired until the finale. The first three items on each plank were shot in tandem with each shooter. Starting at item four through item seventeen, we each shot the next successive item on the plank once the other shooters item was firing. Items eighteen through twenty were shot together once again. All of the items glued onto the planks were class C and small class B items. They consisted of such things as Wow!, Incredible, Heart Stopper, Denver, Magic Carpet, Solar Assignment, Succession of Color, Guests from Heaven, Brother's Heavy Weights, Desperate Attempt, Flower Thunder, Oriental Thunder, etc. Once item twenty on each pyros plank (Master of Orion) was ignited, I headed over to the bin with the two 4 inch shells and ignited them manually. Then, I proceeded far enough from the rest of the finale to ignite the remainder of the finale with the Radiomatch devices. When the two four inchers exploded in the sky, I started pressing the six Radiomatch remote control buttons in sequence with the following items...25 shot red explorer, 100 shot color crossette, 36 shot Celestial Beauty, 36 shot Titanium Salute, rack one with the ten 2.5" display shells, and rack two with the twelve combination shells. At one point in time, my entire backyard looked like daylight. The finale fired for about one minute and the entire show was wrapped up in about 23 minutes. I was very, very pleased with the entire show from start to finish except with the 36 shot Titanium Salute which ignited all 36 shells at once. I was hoping for it to act like the other 36 shot Titanium Salute that I shot four nights earlier. Those shells took about 30 seconds to complete whereas this one shot all 36 shells within a few seconds. Oh well, it all turned out pretty good in the end. When the show was over, my entire party of fifty people applauded loudly and many neighbors who stood around to watch were completely satisfied. One of my friends was so satisfied and handed me $50 for the show. I really appreciated that since he didn't have to do that. That is when you realize that you put on a great show. I have already started thinking of what to do for next year's show, but I am just sitting back for the next few months to enjoy the fruits and labors of this year's 4th of July show. Actually, I could not wait for everyone to head home after the show so that I could sit in the comforts of my family room and relive my show once again on videotape. The videotape came out perfect in my opinion and gave me time to sit back and really enjoy the show this time around. The day after was quite an event picking up all of the garbage. I hope everyone had as good a time igniting their own shows as I did mine. Just remember, plenty of advance planning and safety goes a long way! *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* well it started at around 9:15 pm. i had a few pieces of thick plywood and i mounted the tubes onto the wood. i had a lot of fireworks including cakes, roman candles, ninja shells, artillerys shells, new rambo kid, bad boy shells, silver jets rockets, firecracker mats, adn a few fountains. everything went off without a hitch and nothing went on fire. i had eveything set up the day before and all my stuff landed in my pool. for my finale i had a delivery crate and i mounted 10 cakes, a 100 shot saturn battery and a 25 shot saturn battery, and i had 4 shells all go off at once along with whatever rockets and jets i had leftover. the finale was so loud i couldnt here myself talk. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* My fourth of July was one to remember. Every year the fourth is a very special. I save my money in advance and go buy a great assortment of fireworks. Then on the fourth me and my dad shoot them off! We always have the time of our lives. It started on the 2nd when I purchased my fireworks it was a great assortment with a 24pc tnt bottle rockets, 12 pack red devil bottle rockets 2 six pacs of artillery shells (Mortars) some monster (the name brand) fireworks along with parachutes and other odds in ends. Along with this great selection I was lucky to get free black cat fireworks. We aren't talking a few little odds and end fireworks we are talking big time 4 packs of 50 sets of 50 black cats and 50 sets of 100. My grandfather happens to own a chain of convient stores witch used to sell some fireworks. After they stopped selling them they were left sitting in the where house so I picked them up and used them greatly. Along with the black cats there were numerous whistiling chasers, sparklers and other odds and ends. Finally my assortment was complete. I had the plan figured out to. I would shoot the fireworks with my dad which is most important to me and then I would go to some friends house and shoot some over there. So the fourth finally roles around and I was so exited. One reason I think I get so exited when the fourth roles around is because I am not one of the people who has a ton of money and spends 150 dollars like nothing. I save my money and its a big accomplishment to have bought something that I have worked towards. So now the fourth was here and I know I would get my money out of it. Me and my dad started early mixing the variety up shooting numerous bottle rockets and whistling chasers and such thing. What we really like to do is put bunches and bunches of 50 and 100 packs mix them all together and lite one and then soon they all catch on fire and it fills the air with pure BANGS! For what seems like hours but is really only about a minute. After that we move on to the bigger stuff like mortars that light up the sky. As we finish I knew my evening was only begging because I was after that going to a friends house to shoot more. At this get together there was high dollar fireworks. And it was an awesome show with mortars galore including the doubles. But as luck turned out it started to rain and the fireworks were no more. Even though it rained I had the time of my life as I know I will every year and the year after that! It will always mean a lot to me. Because when the night is over it will go to the past and everything will rise to smoke. *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* This 4th of July was me and my friends 4th annual fireworks party at his cabin. Each year we have been getting more and more fireworks, and this year tops them all. We took advantage of Phantom Fireworks annual 2 for 1 deal, which isn't a really big deal since all items are at least double the price of other suppliers, but they have great quality and some very unbeatable items compared to smaller places. I'm now a Premier card holder(2 for 1 year round) so that goes to show how much we spent. We go to the Phantom showroom in Wisconsin, it's not a superstore, but has a great selection especially during May and June when inventory is very strong, you can get just about any type of effect you want. Before the 4th of July we begin with small things like bottle rockets over the lake, and gradually pick up pace until the night of the 4th of July. The sand beach makes a perfect shooting spot. Started off the night with large rockets and moved onto aerial repeaters. This year we started shooting a few different aerial repeaters together to get a really nice variety of effects instead of having items to stand on their own. We had gotten some considerable larger repeaters this year and there we no let downs in what these things can do. Only did about 1 large size fountain, the "Apache firedance" it was very long and had nice effects, but didn't shoot very high; this was about the only large fountain we did, which is too bad come to think of it because I tend to like them. We had a finale of our large stuff and then for the finish a Phantom " New Millenium Madness", which was 7 large tube shots. The bursts were larger then expected and just about professional size, it did go by pretty quick, but next year I might try 2 of them together, and have them launch one after the other to lengthen the overall time more. The item that stands out most is Phantom's "Rain of Fire". This 16 shot repeater is a very nice red color of palm trees with red rain. It's quality of shots were unbeatable to other pieces, and has a pretty good timed length. Only had 2 this year, but when I did the first one, I had people wanting to buy the second one from me right then and there. I also had good luck with the "Midnight Monsoon" and "Raptor". This is also the second year with the "Aerial Rampage Shells" 12 very large reloadable shots with tremendous color and variety of effects, had a great launch sound. The "Pyro Pandemonium" also had the loudest whistles I've ever heard. These items will definatley be in next year. This year, most of the neighbors on the lake weren't even there for the 4th of July, too bad since it's a lot more fun when you have a couple places shooting stuff off. Pretty quiet on our side of the lake, but you could hear other stuff on the other side of the island. Hopefully others that saw our stuff liked it too, had no complaints and were shooting well into the morning hours. The only bad item I got from phantom fireworks was their new "Blue ringed willows", let me tell you to think twice about getting this one, there was nothing blue about it, pretty lame silver colored willows, suprisingly had great reviews. Since the 4th of July I have been buying up some other pieces I've never done and testing them out to see if I want to buy more for next years 4th of July party. With the summer coming to an end, I'm counting the days to do it all over again next year armed with knowledge of what items to get and others to skip. I'm getting addicted more and more to fireworks each passing year. Knowledge of what to get can be a great money saver, especially for assortment packs, which tend to be filled with a lot of items I didn't really want after all. Will probally skip out on these next year, and stick with stuff I know people will love. Good Luck! *:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:*'``'*:-., _, . -:* (End)