Fireworksland.com
presents
"How I Spent My 4th of July" (2002 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. The names of the contributors have not been included, because many contributors want to be anonymous. I'm sure you will recognize your story somewhere in this.

These stories were sent to me by e-mail in July 2002. Each story describes what that person did with fireworks to celebrate Independence Day in the United States, on July 4, 2002. 

This year's collection is dedicated to the memory of Will Kissel, of Yankton, South Dakota. Will passed away in June of 2002. Will contributed stories to this collection in each of the past three years that I did this collection, and his contributions always included accurate and detailed descriptions of many fireworks that he tried out. I'm sure that Will would have contributed an entertaining story to this year's collection.

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 24 sheets of paper to print all of it. It is over 23,000 words long. This year, only 33 people contributed stories, compared with over 50 in past years.

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 To avoid possible violation of copyright law, please do not publish, copy, post or transmit this text to anyone else.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 I was specifically requested to leave the name in). No attempt has been made to correct any spelling errors, punctuation or grammatical errors, and there are many errors. In some stories you will need to just accept bad spelling and grammar to read a good story. To edit these stories to make the English correct may have ruined the flavor and character of the story, so they are not edited.

The opinions about the performances of fireworks on the market which appear in these stories are strictly the opinions of the authors of the stories! They do not reflect the opinions of myself about the particular fireworks mentioned.

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.......

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Hey... hope you had a good fourth.

heres my story.

Really my fourth started around June 1st preparing for the show and getting on the internet looking at all the fireworks and reviews. Then around June 25th i went to go get my first batch of fireworks. We always go to this place  at riverside missouri called Crazy harrys fireworks. Ive been going there  since i was a young child and i love it..... it is the best place to get  fireworks. Well we ended up getting around 500 dollers worth at fireworks. Then we went to some tents around harrys and some other tents around our place when they opened. 
Heres a list of some of the fireworks ( theres way to many to mention )

Multi shot cakes- 
1 Grand Canyon by brothers- I was really suprised by this one because it was so cheap and did such a good job.

2 Super stallions By brothers- These are always awesome and so cheap.

2 Kirin's by maverick- These were really good last year but this year they seamed wimpier....... still pretty good though.

1 beyond 2000 by brothers- Every pyro maniac like me has to get atleast one of these. Next year i will get 2 or 3 of these.

1 Denver by by brothers- This was also a very good multishot that i will get more of next year.

1 jumbo mighty cobra by maverick- Do not get this.... its big and its at a decent price but it is not good. dont even be fooled by the price

1 gold brocade by blackcat- this was also big with a decent price that did not perform well.... do no get this cake.

1 atom splitter by blackcat- a decent multishot, good for its price but not as good as super stallion

1 warp speed by blackcat- this is now one of my favorite multishots and i will get more next year.

1 heartstopper by blackcat- i always get this one.... it is very good and a great finale.

1 street party by blackcat- this one was ok but i wont get it again next year

1 world class big package 500 gram- this 12 shot cake was awesome and pretty cheap.... i will be getting another one next year.

1 world class loyal to none 500 gram.  this was a 33 shot cake that was very 
good and also pretty cheap.... i will get another one next year

1 world class One bad mother 500 gram- This was the best thing i have ever seen.... if your going to get a 500 gram you must get this cake!

Those were all the cakes i got and will get more next year.... we also had  many ringshell rockets by blackcat which i will get more of next year. we had many large roman candles but i dont like them so much and wont get them next year. We always get reloadable artillery shells but next year we wont get nearly as many and just get lots of multishots. We also get 30 large fountains or so and light them off 2 or 3 at a time. 

Next year will be even better but this years display was the best my family and i have ever done and i know next years will be better..... thanks bob, hope you had a good one.

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WOW! I think I topped my show from last year. This was one great 4th Of July. I finally got my hands on the new Heavy Weight cakes, and some of them were great. 

I went on my first firework hunt about 3 weeks before the 4th. I went to a new store that just opened up in a neighboring county. They had some nice stuff, but they charged about double what I usually pay. They had a few items that I knew I couldn't find anywhere else, so I bought a few of them. They had 19-Shot 1.3G Thunder Chrysanthemums and 1 3/4 inch Thundering King Salute Shells. They also had some American Thunder Roman Candles that were really stout. The 19-Shot Thunder Chrysanthemum is basically just like a 1.3G Thunder King or Shimmering Crackling Gold. The Thundering King Salutes are a little louder than the Thunder Chrysanthemum, but not by too much. This place had a ton of heavy weight cakes, but they were charging $49.99 per cake. I knew my local dealer would have them much cheaper, so I stayed away from those. 

The next weekend I drove to Bean Station, TN to check out the stores over there. They have about 6-7 year around stores. I went to four of them before I found one with decent prices. I picked up about a dozen cakes. He had a Brothers cake that really surprised me when I lit it. It was called Double Pop Missle. It's nothing like the 1.3G cakes, but it was pretty loud for a 1.4G cake. It also had some nice color breaks. When I got back home, I went to a few tents around here and just bought a couple cakes here and there, nothing special. I decided I would wait for my dealer to set up.

My dealer finally set up on June 28th. I went down while they were setting out stock to make sure I got my usual. I stocked up on my favorite cakes and shells, and bought some heavy weight cakes. He only charged $24.95 for every heavy weight cake on his shelves. I don't see how other people can charge twice that amount. If everyone knew about this guys prices, he would put some people out of business. They were waiting to get their credit card machine working, so me and him went to his store to get some goodies. I got some 1.3G single shot Thunder Kings, 25-Shot Shimmering Crackling Golds, 25-Shot Oriental Thunders, and some 2 inch Ti Thunder Salutes. We went back to his tent and the phone lines were down. He just loaded everything into my car and told me to come back and pay him Monday. I thought that was pretty cool of him. Of course, I payed him on Monday. 

I spent a couple hours during the next few days wiring together my finale, and a few other cakes. I didn't wire any shells together this year. I'm sort of burnt out on artillery shells, so I only bought a box or two of the better shells. On the morning of the 4th, I decided that I needed more booms in my finale, so I went back to the first store I went to and bought some more Thunder Chrysanthemums. I hated to pay the high price, but I knew that my dealer probably wouldn't let me have anymore of his loud cakes, plus I didn't want to be a pest. I returned home and wired in the cakes, then took a nap before we had our barbeque. The night of the 4th was perfect, no wind or rain. I started about 9:15pm EST.

Here is what went up during the course of the show:

1 Brothers 25-Shot Killer Alligator
1 Great Grizzly 25-Shot Fireworks Junkie
1 25-Shot Extreme Stand Back
1 Brothers 25-Shot Wild Mushroom
2 Black Cat 10-Shot Willows
4 Great Grizzly 25-Shot Twisted Nights (one of my favorites)
4 Lightning Bolt 25-Shot Vegas At Night
1 Great Grizzly 25-Shot Just Looking
1 Great Grizzly 25-Shot Rock n Roll
1 HKP Fire Hawk Horse Racing (lousy cake! high price!)
1 19-Shot Liuyang Salute (pretty loud)
1 Brothers 100-Shot Yellow Ribbons (I loved this one!)
1 Great Grizzly 9-Shot Crater Creator Heavy Weight (nice, but not nearly
as nice as the other heavy weights, I wouldn't buy it again)
1 12-Shot World Class Package Heavy Weight (I liked this one)
12 Thundering King 1 3/4 inch salutes (very loud)
6 2 inch Ti Thunder Salutes (AWESOME, I don't think it gets any louder
than these)
1 TNT 100-Shot Nuclear Reactor (This was a great cake. It lasted for
quite some time, and it was really pretty. I'll definitely buy more of
these. They're pretty cheap too)
1 Brothers 36-Shot Saturday Night Special Heavy Weight ( Okay, but not
great)
1 Brothers 19-shot Double Pop Missle
1 25-Shot Thunder In The Valley (total waste of money)
1 16-Shot Blazing Comets
1 Lightning Bolt 25-Shot Air Raid
2 Deqili 25-Shot Colorful Whirlwind
1 Cannon 25-Shot Explosion In Blue (nice color breaks)
1 19-Shot cake that didn't have any english words on it. It was all
chinese, so I don't have a clue what it was. It was a beautiful shot
though.
1 16-Shot WOW
1 Beihai 16-Shot Final Defense Heavy Weight (This was a good one)
1 Deqili 36-Shot Sky Garden
3 1.3G 36-Shot Battle Of Colors (old favorite)
2 Great Grizzly 36-Shot Ass Kickin Bone Crunchin Fun (What happened to
these??? These were awesome last year, but they sucked this year. I
guess they watered them down.)
4 Cannon 25-Shot Mardis Gras Parades
5 25-Shot Cajun Pageants
1 United Pyro 16-Shot Bad Dude (This was nice, but it went way too
quick.)
1 TNT 16-Shot 5th Dimension
4 Winda 16-Shot American Power
8 American Thunder 8-ball Roman Candles (These were really loud.)
2 9-Shot Field Artillery
12 Rambo Kid Shells
12 Double Impact Shells
6 Predator Shells
12 Bad Ass Double Break Shells
1 Great Grizzly 19-Shot KissYour Ass Goodbye
1 HKP Fire Hawk 16-Shot Wicked Rage
1 Black Cat 49-Shot Whistling Thunder
1 World Class 25-Shot Grapes Over Vineyard (This one was nice.)
2 19-Shot 1.3G Thunder Chrysanthemums (LOUD!)
1 West Lake 16-Shot Whirlwind
1 TNT 19-Shot Iluminator
2 World Class 16-Shot One Bad Mother Heavy Weights (These were simply
wonderful. HUGE gold breaks and a very powerful lift charge.)
2 Brothers Uncle Sam's Answer Heavy Weights (Another kick ass cake.) 
1 Freedom Reighn 16-Shot Heavy Weight
1 Maverick 25-Shot Gold Fish
12 single shot 1.3G Thunder Kings (LOUD)
4 25-Shot Oriental Thunder (LOUD)
2 25-Shot 1.3G Shimmering Crackling Gold (LOUD)
1 16-Shot Red, White, Boom

Here's the finale:
4 2 inch Ti Thunder Salutes
8 19-Shot Thunder Chrysanthemums
3 1.3G 36-Shot Battle Of Colors
2 25-Shot Colorful Whirlwinds
4 25-Shot Twisted Nights
1 9-Shot Field Artillery
3 25-Shot Vegas At Night
1 16-Shot Blazing Comet
1 16-Shot Whirlwind
2 10-Shot Willows
1 64-Shot Golden Flower
2 36-Shot Ass Kickin Bone Crunchin Fun
3 25-Shot The Virus
2 25-Shot 1.3G Shimmering Crackling Gold
4 25-Shot Oriental Thunder

My finale didn't turn out as good as last years, but it was still awesome. I just randomly wired the cakes. I must have just got lucky with my fuse lengths last year. 

The dealer that set up that new store gave me a cake that he wanted me to test and let him know what I thought about it. It was a 9-Shot Assorted Peony. I can't remember if it had a brand label or not. Anyways, It had large bore tubes, and each shell double broke with two large gold breaks and one big bang. I just wanted to let you know about them, if you haven't tried them before.

My 4th Of July was GREAT. I hope everyone else also had a great holiday. BOOM!

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Here is my show:
I fired off 26 cakes, I rated them one to five stars.
"Air Raid" 25 shots *** It was real good til it fell over about half way.
"America Invincible" 16 shots *** White comets brakes into whistling twirls
"Autumn Drizzle"  19 shots * Only fired 4 shots
"Backflash Mountain" 9 shots **** two breaks with lots of color
"Cracklin Thunder" 7 shots ***** cracking on the way up with loud reports
"Fiery Fantasia" 16 shots **** lots of color changes, report then spirals gown
"Funky Fantasy" 16 shots ***1/2 pearls up with report and stars
"Glider Bomb 9 shots *** 2 breaks  spiral down
"Grand Canyon" 16 shots *** Good but weak
"Illuminant Stars" 25 shots *** white comets up then twirl and report
"Louie Louie" 25 shots **** white whistling comets, report then it squeaked-cute
"Outrageous" 25 shots ***** colorful with loud reports
"Overlord in Sky" 16 shots ** pears with small breaks-same color
"Red Sky" 36 shots ** its was long but not that good
"Southern Storm" 25 shots **** Whirlwinds at top-I like whirlwinds
"Sunglow" 25 shots *** Shuts up breaks into stars and crackle-a few of my cakes did the same thing
"Twist & Shout" 19 shots ***** this started out as a fountain with swirling comets-seamed to have three different effects
"Whirlwind of the Caribbean Sea" 19 shots **** Whirlwinds then color breaks
"Bee Buzz Blast" 25 shots ***1/2 twirled with a good end effect
"Star Creation" 9 shots ** cracking comets
"World of Color" Fountain I didn't know this was a fountain, lots color but low to the ground 
"Fiendish Vicking" 12 shots ***1/2 crackling comets with good hard break
"Outlaws Blues" 16 shots *** comets with break 
"Hollywood Hits" 25 shots *****  everyone really liked this one. White comets, spun, then a squeak. it was cool
"Dragon Fest" 25 shots **** whistling comets, good break, good color
"Gala Festa" 20 shots ***1/2 it was fast, hard breaking, colorful
I had some small things for the kids.  Overall I like cakes better than mortars.
I went to many stands and warehouses looking for some good long lasting fountains. But didn't find any.  Your "A to Z", book sure helped.

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HI I HAVE SOME M-80s AND ME AND MY BUDS JUST HAVE FUN AND A WE HAVE WARS TO WE USE BOOTTLE ROCKETS FOR A WAR BUTÊA GUYÊSAYS WE CAN NOT HAVE M-80s SO WE SAIY WE CAN IF STANDS SELL M-80s AND HE GO,s NO YOU CAN NOT SO WE GO OK SO WE GO BACK THE THE FIRE WORK STAND AND SAY SOME 1 SAYS WE CAN NOT HAVE M-80s AND SHE GOs YES YOU CAN SO NOW WE DO NOT NO SO WE JUST GO UP TO THE NEWSPAPER STAND A BUY A NEWSPAPER AND WE GO TO THE PART ON FIRE WORKS AND WE LOOK OVER TO THE ONES YOU CAN NOT HAVE AND IT HAD M-50s BUT R M-50s REAL OR NOT I NO THE LESS THE NUMBER THE MORE POWER BUT A HAVE NEVER HAD ONE AND WE GET A LOT SO IS IT ONE YOU CAN NOT HAVE IN THE US OR WHAT AND SOME R JUST FULL OF BULL SHIT YOU CAN NOT HAVE M-80s HA WE CAN AND THE NEWS SAY KIDS HAVE M-80s AND BLOW UP SINES AND YOU CAN NOT BLOW UP A CIGARETTE BOX HOW CAN YOU BLOW UP A SINE JUST BULL SHIT. 

HIT ME BACK BYE

(reply)

YES I AGRE STOP ALL OF THE CRY BABYS IN AR YOU CAN SHOOT ON THE 1st TO THE 4thÊAND SOME JUST DONT READ THE PAPER OR LOOK ON THE NEWS SOME COME OUT AND SAY I WILL CALL THE COPS IF YOU DO NOT STOP IF AND IT IS THE 2nd SO HE OR SHE CAN NOT GET THE COPS OVER HEAR WIN YOU CAN SHOOT SO SOME GO UP TO THE CITY AND SAY JUST THE 4th GOD DAM A LOT OF BABYS HELL WIN IT IS THE 4thÊSOME GET ALL MAD SO WHAT IS IT AND IT IS 12:00PM IT IS OT LICK YOU R A SLEEP BUT YES SOME R BUT GET OVER IT AND IF YOU WORK SAME TO YOU IT IS JUST FOR DAYS IT IS LICK IT IS KILLING YOU WHAT IS NEXT NO 4th AT ALL AND Y DOÊKNOWÊY WE HAVE 4th OF JULY DONT YOU BABYS. AND I NO YOU ALL HAD FUN WIN YOU ALLÊHAD ITÊSO WE CAN TO. 

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Hi Bob, My 4th was pretty good this year. The police and fire depts. said they were going to crack down this year but that didn't stop me or anyone else from celebrating the fourth with fireworks. We had a lot of safe and items as well as crackers, romans, rockets, etc. A couple of the highlights were a fountain called golden future which had 3 tiers to it , sort of like a birthday cake. It started with an intense crackle on top and the second level had more crackle in tubes that went all the way around the 2nd level. The 3rd level (bottom) had green torch W/ titanium sparks that went all the way around until the last three tubes which shot crackers into the air. Cool! We also had some Calif. type candles that were pretty nice called fire inviolable. They start with a gold flitter and then change into a titanium white and end with an intense crackle. I also made a flash curtain out of some crackling whips. I strung some string between to poles and taped the top of the whips to the string. I then matched them using sticky match and used a e-match to fire it. I had a lot of light sticks that i had bought that we ringed our yard with and made all kinds of designs with. Recommend to everyone to try this as it highlights your display and shooting area. On a closing note we had some people down the street shooting some big cakes and some nice 2 break shells and the police helicopters would fly over an try to spot them with their spot light. As soon as the cops would leave they would start shooting again. The cops would come back and they stop. cops leave and they start shooting again. This went on five times. I was dieing laughing so hard and we were cheering on these true pyros that were being so defiant!  Hope you had a good 4th too Bob!!

" He who hath once smelt the smoke   is never again free "    

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    This 4th of July was probably the best out of all the other years, no exception. This year I had 2 shows including the 4th, and the first one I had was at my aunt and uncles house. We were throwing a suprise for my grandparents and i plannned a little fireworks when it was getting late and I thought this would be a perfect chance to give people a little taste of what i had for this year. While planning the party months early, I had aÊsuggestion to have a small fireworks show, which consisted of 1 box of Winda Artillery Shells w/comet, 2 garded in spring repeaters, Black Cat Butterfly Rockets, RedÊMeteor Rockets, and a 100 shot Saturn Missle for the finale. The show went perfect and everyone was cheering and asking for more, but they would have to wait untill the 4th.
 
Below is the list of Fireworks I had purchased this year.
 
1. 2 Boxes of Winda Artillery Shells w/comet
2. 2 Boxes of Sky Broken Palm Shells w/wistle
3. 1 Box of Winda Artillery Shells
4. 2 Garden In Spring Repeaters
5. 2 Happy Repeaters
6. 2 Kazi Repeaters (I highly recommend these)
7. 2 96 shot Colour Pearls w/report
8. 4 gross of bottle rockets
9. 8 Boom Bomb Roman Candles (sounds like gun shots)
10. 12 Black Cat Butterly Rockets
11. 12 Red Meteor Rockets
 
    Everything went great and everyone loved my show! Next year i plan to get mor artillery shells and maybe a finale rack.

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I did my ususal for fireworks and stopped at just about every stand  that I could find within about 50 miles of my house.  I spent my usual  of $400-$500.  I also did my usual of making my own show.  I usually  set up my show during the day on the 4th.  I set out all the goodies,  and then start settting them up in a preliminary manner on plywood.   Then I post-it note, to the top of each item, its duration (Thanks to  Bob Weaver and his publications).  Next I Elmers glue them all down to  the plywood and begin to Visco them all together.  I use the quickmatch  sparingly, as it is hard to come by for me.  One trick that worked well  was to stick a strobe pot randomly here and there.  I only have access  to visco and quickmatch, but I made a good show none the less. 

I began with some fountains, "2 Cool", "Display Missle", etc.  Then I  began to add some repeaters such as Atom Splitter, Rocky Mountain,  Martin Bomber, Falcon Rising, Drinker of the Wind, etc.  I found some  of the best items that I had never used before were the Shagadelic Mojo (wow what big bursts, and LOUD), and A Little Green (ditto on the LOUD  bursts).  I also really liked Despirate Attempt.  This was a great  repeater.  One of my favorite parts of my show was the 8 Firing Squad  cakes all set by quickmatch to go off at once.  What a neat effect.  I  had only tried one or two at a time before, but 8 was amazing.  Kind of  like being inside of a bag of microwave popcorn while it was popping!   I also found the Pyro King Art shells of very high quality as well as a  kit I had never bought before, Devil's Knight shells.  Only 6 in a box,  but what big, colorful bursts!  I found the Crackling Golden Palms 19  shot by Black Cat to be a little disappointing compared to prior years,  but Warp Speed was still a crowd favorite.  All in all I used probably  70-80 cakes, 15 fountains, 40 art shells with the last 16 all being  shot at once and all were salutes.  What a finale!!

The Wild Stallion was very similar to the old Super Stallion, but still  a good cake for the size and price.  I used Critical Acclaim shells for  the first time too and was really pleased with their effects.  One the  other hand, I was not so impressed with the "This is America" cake, one  of the 500 gram Brothers Heavy Weight, it was a good cake, but for the  money $30+, I was expecting more.   

This year I took the advice of Bob Weaver, and used clear packaging  tape instead of masking tape I used last year, to fuse items together,  and had a flawless show.  Everything went off as planned.  The  Fireworks buying guide from Bob Weaver was used significantly to time  my cakes and fountains, etc.  What an asset.  We had a great show.  All  in all it was about 35 minutes from start to finish.  Due to the fire  scares this year we also hosed down the field before the show and had  plenty of hoses and backup water supplies ready in waiting.    

My favorite item of the year was Shagadelic Mojo; amazing colors, LOUD,  and longlasting.  WOW.  Biggest disappointment of the year, Shimmering  Crackling Gold, never tried it before, but was expecting more.

That was my show.  What a blast!

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         This forth of July was our annual block party and one of the best, I  started setting up our display months before the fourth, I bought hdpe  mortars "online" and glued them all down on plywood boards. I also glued  together in line about 30 1/2 inch pvc pipe, which makes excellent rocket  launchers. My brother and me bought most of our fireworks in pennsylvania and  some in connecticut. Our list of fireworks consisted of, 1 case of brothers  brand Thunder Dragon shells, three boxes of Pyronormal Experiance double break  shells, six boxes of six"Titainium Salute Shells" which are just as good as  the old time aerial bombs, one box of Uncle Sam Brand aerial display shells,  one box of Trillogy Triple break display shells, two boxes of Asian cat  double break shells,  Five of the new 500 gram cakes, "Brothers brand 36shot  Blond Joke, 36shot parrots prattle, 36shot Hickstown Heaven, cannon brand  29shot Tiger Thunder and  the 29shot Air Heads,  two cannon brand Space  Bastian Fountains which are 5 min long duration, two 25shot Firing  Squads"good ones", one 36shot battle of colors, three 9shot Ace combat  repeaters, three Niagra falls, three Victory celebration, six rising dragons,  one 12shot Sky revenge, two 16shot Wild Boar, two 25shot magic carpet, two  20shot Total Annihilation, 1 case of cannon brand 10shot Blowout, two 18shot  Clone fireworks, two 60shot Reign of heroes, two 12shot Master of magic, two  64shot fish bowl comotion, two 25shot drinker of the wind, one 15shot  Mysterious Invasion, one 20shot What a blast, two 12shot Alladin, two 15shot  gold to titanium salute, eight boxes of Magic crystal helicoptors, 5 boxes of  moon lander helicoptors, ten pkgs of double report rockets, whistling crackle  rockets, tw splender of the sun rockets and scorpion rockets, four 36shot  giant saturn missile batteries, 5 doz friendship flag parachutes "day use".                 
                      I placed all the shells in the tubes, keeping together  the triple break in a set of 30 tubes, and double break in one set of 42  tubes, then the single break shells in 28 tubes. I set aside a set of 12  tubes for the titainium salute shells, I fused all this together with quick  match, which would be the grand finale.                       
My brother and I started off with parachute fireworks to  get the fourth of July going, the kids loved this, chasing them all over the  place as they floated down,  then we did the brothers brand magic crystal and  moon lander helicopters, which in my opinion are the best helicopters  availible. Then we shot off barrages of double report rockets from the 30  tubes I put together. "theres nothing like sending up 30 rockets all at once",  audience loves it. Every once in a while we shot off a titainium salute shell, which would shake the nieborhood.  As it got dark we started lighting  repeaters and fountains,  and with my brother and me lighting two or three at  the same time this made for an awsome show, the  crowd went wild and just as  they thought we were done I brought out the display shell boards, the sky  was lit up  with hundreds of breaks and titainium salutes,  an awsome ending  to the show. Later people just came up to us and  thanked us for a super show  and great block party. . . . 

 the best fireworks were:  Uncle Sam Brand aerial display shells, these  shells by far were far superior to any consumer shell I've used yet. 

the worst fireworks: Cannon brand spider rockets, most of  3 doz  just blew  up and never took off. 

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This fourth was especially different because almost every firework I had contained over 3 grams of flash powder. Including about 20 M-80 type firecrackers (red, 1 1/2" long,  1/2" wide with fuse in the side) , 20 blockbusters (silver, 2 1/2" long and 1/2" wide with fuse in top) , one "M-1,000,000" (a red toilet paper roll with fuse in top), a 6 ounce Dragon sky rocket that I filled with flash powder, a model rocket filled with the stuff from the Dragon rocket plus flash powder, a giant rocket with an equally gigantic 100g (or so) flash powder payload, and one of those "Artillery Head" rockets. 
 THE day begins at 11:00AM on the dot as I jump out of bed due to an errant M-80 explosion. I run outside in my boxers to see where it came from, but the source of the blast was nowhere to be found.
I jump back into bed, still delirious from the explosion just 5 minutes before. After about 30 minutes of tossing, turning and watching the weather channel, I finally found the strength to get out of bed, brush my teeth and have some breakfast. After I finished eating, I grabbed some bottle rockets, firecrackers, and headed over to my friend N's house. Once I get there, N tells me about his so-called "madd loud double cracker", which is just two normal firecrackers taped and fused together. According to him, if they go off near you, they knock out your hearing for a good half-hour. He ransacks his dad's car and pulls out a pair of those huge industrial-strength ear protectors (those things that look like those old, big, doofy stereo headphones).  So he takes one of these firecracker things out, lights it, and runs. Of course I just stood there, and the damn thing was no louder that a normal firecracker. After sitting on N's stood for a couple more minutes, I decided it's time to kick off the fourth of July and light off some aerial shit. I light off a bottle rocket, and watch it hit a guy's house and pop. No damage was done, and the guy wasnât home so I decided to risk continuing my bombardment. After a few more rockets, and a couple of Nig.. um, er, I mean African American chasers (for those of you who donât know these are just bottle rockets without sticks) flew around we decided to start heading towards the bootleg cul-de-sac where many of our other friends live. We loaded up on crackers and bottle rockets and called for our friends A, and J.  Once we got to the bootleg cul-de-sac thing, N and I started lighting off some firecrackers, throwing some and breaking the occasional dud in half and lighting the powder. Several of mine were old and blew up in my hand, causing quite a ring in my ear. We eventually ran out of stuff and went back home to eat (I was the only one who actually ate breakfast), get our bathing suits on, and reload.
	I came back to my A's house complete with 2 M-80s and a blockbuster and jumped into his pool. Keep in mind that it is over 105 degrees outside WITHOUT the humidity, so the pool was like a sanctuary, not mention the water was like bath water.  We stayed in for about an hour and a half and then continued with the festivities. I started by throwing an M-80 into this small fenced off lawn area that housed a large electric transformer. It landed about 10ft. away from the transformer and exploded when I was halfway to A's house. The report bounced off the houses ahead of it and set off the warning beep on several cars up and down the street. A few minutes later, a lit off the second M-80, which was not even half as loud as the first. Then with much aprehention, I lit off the blockbuster. The damn thing was at least 10 times louder than the first M-80!!! It set off several car alarms, and sent me and A running. I stayed in A's house for at least 10 minutes, sure that a cop would come to investigate, but nothing came of it. 
	As the day progressed, several more of my M-80s and blockbusters went off, oddly enough so did several Saturn missiles, countless firecracker packs, hundreds of bottle rockets and god knows what else from almost every conceivable direction. Still, there were no cops to be seen. Not even one lonely cop-in-the-box (those NYPD scooter things). If that doesnât surprise you, then this should: I live in Staten Island, which is part of NEW YORK CITY for Christ's sake (yes, I'm the same guy from the last story with the 36" mortar shell [which was actually 16"÷sorry], and the one before who lit off firecrackers when the undercover cop car passed by.) I heard from a friend that the bitch that lives next door to the guy across the street from my house called the cops on the guy for lighting off blockbusters and the like. Six hours later, the cops still didnât come. I know that the cops are out looking for terrorists, but this really sounded too good to be true, yet it wasnât. 
	Me, N, A, and some other kids headed over to my house at about 8:00 for my annual BBQ. We cooked some dogs and burgers, washed the backyard table and chairs and then at about 9:00, we finally sat down to eat. As it got darker, the fireworks became more and more prevalent. All around us the sky was filled with flashes, whistles, bangs, crackles, bursts, comets, pearls, large mortar shell bursts, small mortar shell bursts, cake florals, titanium salutes, M-80 bangs etc. 
We wrapped up our meal, filled our pockets with M-80s and blockbusters, and went into my house to get my rockets. I decided to take just the artillery head rocket and the dragon rocket with flash powder payload for now, and come back for the two model rocket ones later. I got my camera, and we went through the backyard and got our bikes. While we were discussing where to set the stuff off, we were interrupted by the all too familiar site of a large "community affairs" police van passing by my house. I knew that they saw the two large rockets in my hand and ran into my yard and threw them over the fence into my neighbor's yard. Sure enough the boneheads made a sharp turn and passed my house, looking for the red sticks. After some curious stares, the van continued on its path. We laughed quite a bit, retrieved the rockets, and headed to this kid J's house. When we got there his family started getting on my nerves, so despite J's pleading, I decided to light the Artillery head rocket and go to my friend P's house off the rest of my stuff. Just as I was getting out my camera, I remembered that I didnât bring the battery. So I just thought "the hell with it", set the rocket into a hole in a manhole cover, and lit the fuse. This rocket was really stale and the fuse burned a centimeter at a time before smoldering. Finally, the fuse began burning constantly and the rocket began to fire. Instead of shooting into the air with a loud roar, the fuckinâ thing exploded on the ground, showering the entire street with sparks. Thankfully nobody was hurt, but we were still kicked out. I went home, got my camera battery, and then joined N, P, a kid named L, a kid named J, and A in front of P's house. P and his dad were lighting off firecracker packs and fountains when I got there, so I decided to dump all my M-80s, Blockbusters and stuff into P's bushes for safe keeping. 
It was pretty boring watching P and his dad, so I handed my camera over to N, and me and L went up the street to an empty block in an attempt to light a blockbuster. I told L to light it while I taped, but at first he did not agree. After much deliberation he accepted, but was too weak to push down the piezo-based ignition button on my lighter (I still think he was faking it). I refused to let him film and instead went back to P's house, gave N the camera, and lit the blockbuster off in the middle of street that runs through P's block. I felt the concussion of the blast pass through my body, and judging by the car alarm warning beeps in the distance, it passed through some cars as well. The visual effects were stunning too, the reflection of the flash from the clouds above and the titanium sparks both complimented the enormous report. I ran back to P's house and watched him and his dad light several packs of firecrackers strung together. Besides that, there was a plethora of fireworks going off all around as well, the biggest of which were some huge titanium salute shells behind us. These were the loudest ones I heard on this fourth. They were pretty far away actually, as the sound of the explosion took about 3 seconds to reach us after the initial flash and sparks. 
 I went up the block again to set off a blockbuster, but this time this guy we call "FBI guy" (he's not actually in the FBI, he just likes to wear sunglasses and sit on his steps and stare at people) was outside. I asked him if he minded the loud explosions, but he said "go ahead, just do it in the middle of the street". So another blockbuster goes off, though it wasnât as loud as the first. P and his dad were lighting off a fountain, and when it was done, P's dad lit off a firecracker bomb (10 packs at once). After that spectacle was over, I asked P's dad if it was all right to set off my M-80s in front of his house, and he said it was cool with him, as long as I didnât light off any blockbusters. So I lit one off right in the middle of the street, and it turned out to be pretty nice. Some people were clapping (they probably didnât see the blockbuster go off but saw the M-80's titanium flash) and I bowed (humorously). P then lit off another fountain, and I just walked around it and watched.
I lit a 3rd blockbuster, which turned out to be the loudest one of the day so far. After returning to P's house from the 30 second run, I lit off another M-80. Of course, it was the worst one of the day.
I  then decided to kick it up a notch, and grabbed the modified 6oz. Dragon skyrocket. I returned to the spot where me and L attempted to light the first blockbuster, lest the rocket blows up on the floor like the first one did, put it into a manhole cover vent, lit it, and ran backwards. The rocket soared into the sky flawlessly, and gave off a blockbuster-like report that lit the clouds and echoed all over. After returning to P's house and watching some more firecracker packs go off, I lit off my last M-80, and then went back up the block to set off the last blockbuster. As I was about to light it, I noticed a headlight beam up ahead coming from a street that ran parallel to the one I was one, but since houses blocked my view of the car, I thought nothing of it. So I lit the blockbuster, and ran. As I turned my head to see the explosion, I noticed the all-too familiar shape of the front of a cop car emerging from the street up ahead. My fear was confirmed as the NYPD cruiser slowly drove down the street. As soon as I saw the blue "NYPD" letters, I broke into a frenetic run to P's house. Then Just as the cop car reached the middle of the "intersection", the blockbuster went off. This time it was, ironically, the loudest one yet. The cop car stopped, and made a left turn onto the street I was on. P, P's dad, and L all managed to run into P's house and shut the door in my face while N and I were the only ones who had to balls to walk over to the waiting police cruiser. 
	After a story about how one of his friends was killed when an M-80 went off in his pocket, the cop asked us to show him our pockets once again, and finally left with no incident, though he did say that if he saw us lighting off any more fireworks he would take us all in. I decided not to risk lighting off anything else and just spend the rest of the night bike riding. It turned out that bike riding would only keep me out of trouble for about 15 minutes, since as soon as I left to go home, my neighbor M and a bunch of his friends approached me begging for more fireworks (I gave them some stuff earlier but after hearing their story involving an M-80 in a glass bottle I decided not to trust them with anything else). I let them have my last blockbuster under one condition: they set it off while I watch (and tape). So off we went to find a suitable location to light the thing. Eventually we decided to put it under some dickhead's garbage can. I backed away to a short distance, and watched as one of the kids lit the blockbuster. The garbage can was literally blown about 20ft. into the air and bounced off some power lines. The kids split in all different directions as a cop car approached (I am pretty sure it was the one that witnessed the blockbuster going off) and I started walking back to my house calmly making sure the cops didnât see me. After they made a U-turn and headed my way, I ran like a bat out of hell back to my house and jumped my gate and went through the back. I watched TV for a little, and after reassuring my self the cops were gone, I stepped outside on my front porch to watch the fireworks around me. Much to my dismay, there were none (it was about 11:30AM at the time) . Then all of a sudden a titanium salute went off about 3 blocks away and scared the hell out of me. My parents and the miserable polock next door (remember him? If not, read my last story) ran outside to see what it was. The Polock was really pissed off, in fact he said that when he "cahl da pole-eece" to complain about all the horrible fireworks going off, the cops told him that they had better things to do, and told the Polock to get a life. I got a good laugh out of that one.
After everyone went back in, I decided to watch for more of those Salute things. So there I sat with my camera for about a half hour. I didnât get any Titanium Salutes, but I got some nice regular mortar shells going off from the same direction. I got everything on tape except the stuff at the beginning, and I will be sending you the tape ASAP (on that tape will be other stuff including last year's fourth of July). This definitely will go down as another sick fourth of July. Though last year's fourth had much better camera footage (since I did the filming), this one was a lot more fun. Hopefully Next year's fourth will be even better, as I am saving the two model rocket bombs and the M-1,000,000 for next year.

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First let me start off and assure you that the only casualties of this year's 4th of July celebration were a roll of paper towels and a folding chair.  As you'll see -- it could have been worse.  A lot worse!

We started out the same way we have for the past four years, with a trip to the Big Boys Toys fireworks booth up in Anacortes.  This years stash was comprised of the following fireworks:

              Flash Bomb Shells (48)
       Double Xplosion Shells (12)
             Unleash the Beast Shells (24)
             Great Willow Cake
             Virus Cake
             Tidal Surge Cake
             Dark Zone Cake
             Just Looking Cake
             Spring Rain (2)
             Powerhouse Finale Cake
             Misc smoke and kiddie stuff

As always, we got a great deal from the people at Big Boys Toys.

In recent years we have fired our fireworks electronically.  This works very well, but requires that each firework fuse be wrapped with Nichrome wire.  And therein was a problem!  I had forgotten to order Nichrome this year!  No problem, as I figured we could just use very small gauge wire and it should heat up OK.  In fact it did... as long as the wire between the firing panel and the fuse didn't exceed a couple of feet!  But I needed about 50 to 75 feet between the panel and the fireworks!  I was going to need that NiChrome wire.

The 4th was in a couple of days -- no time to place an order online.Ê I would have to find a local supplier.  I called everywhere I could think of -- electronic suppliers, hardware stores, craft supply.  No luck.  Then I got lucky, one of the places I called, Hardware Specialty, didn't have any but they had written down the names and numbers of some places that did (I was not the first to call them looking for Nichrome). I called one of the places, Process Heating in Seattle.  Bingo!  They had some, but it meant a trip to downtown Seattle (a ferry ride and then a half hour drive for me).  I was desperate.  When I got there they indeed had the wire and only wanted a couple of dollars to put in the coffee collection!

The morning of the 4th I put my two kids to work wrapping Nichrome wire around all the fuses.  A little dab of duco cement on each insured that they would stay in place.

By the afternoon I had all the mortar shells wired up and ready to go.  I quickly covered them with a tarp as it was threatening rain.  A good thing too because pretty soon, as is the tradition around Seattle, it began to rain.  I remained optimistic, however, that it would stop... eventually.

My nine year old son and eleven year old daughter passed the early evening time by setting off some nice ground works.  My son quickly fell in love with the smell of burning black powder and the joy of seeing something spark, smoke and blow up.  He's hooked for good.

Meanwhile, hoping to get everyone more involved in the festivities, our friends put together a rating sheet for the various fireworks.  Not content with a simple 1 to 5 rating, they added humorous descriptions for each rating:

             1 = My sparklers are more exciting than this.
             2 = I'd rather be sweat'n to the oldies with Richard Simmons.
             3 = C'mon, this is just nighttime eye candy.
             4 = Woohoo, okely-dokely-doo!
             5 = I'd fight downtown Seattle traffic and parking with two cranky toddlers for this!

The rain finally cleared around 7pm, so we were able to wire up the cakes and run some preliminary tests.  Everything looked good to go.  One of my friends points at two gas cans sitting outside the garage.  "You might want to move those." Good idea.  I move them out of range and behind the garage.

About 10pm we decided to start the show.  We began with a series of shells.  Very nice, but there was a slight problem... they weren't going very high.   I figured that the mortar pipes were a bit too wide to build up sufficient pressure for maximum height.  Some of them were downright scary, blowing up at heights of only 20 feet or so.  Hmmm... better move on to the safer cakes for awhile.Ê

These were a big hit, especially, the Virus, Great Willow, and Just Looking.Ê The Spring Rains proved disappointing, although they were surprising.  They start out as a wimpy fountain, but then quickly shot a couple of very loud reports into the air.

When all the cakes were gone, I tried some more shells.  No good, still too low. We never had this many low breaks in previous years.  I decided that in the interest of safety, I would put a hold on the shells and shoot off the finale cake.  We would then shoot off the remaining shells using the supplied tubes and hopefully get better altitude.

The Powerhouse made a spectacular finale!  We had a similar item last year but it was called the Detonator.  This cake is great... lots of large bursts with loud reports in an ever quickening tempo.

OK, now we can relax and shoot off the remaining shell manually.  A slight delay as we gather the shells from the mortars and dump them into a cardboard box.  We then set up a couple of tubes about 30 feet away from the crowd and began firing them. The height was indeed better, but still lower than I have seen in recent years.  I'm not sure what the problem is... smaller shells?  less lift charge?

Anyway this continues for a while.  My friend holds the box of shells, I load up about six tubes and fire them off with a lighter while everyone enjoys the show.  Hmmm... I really should tell my friend not to hold the box of shells while I'm setting off the tubes.  Oh well, he seems pretty far back and they are going higher now.

Then it happened.  Another low burst.  A big loud one.  Flaming sparks come showering down... One lands directly into the box of shells my friend is holding!  I start towards him and he does the first thing that instinctively comes to him.  He tosses the box... right at me!  I don't try to catch it (I'm not that stupid).  Instead I try to give it a good kick away from everyone and hopefully spread out the couple of dozen of remaining shells.  Unfortunately, the cardboard box (doh!) starts on fire.  Pretty soon the shells start exploding everywhere.  Sparks and flames are jumping out in all directions.  The crowd leaps to their feet and begin the process of panicking.  The kids are screaming and everyone runs to safety.  My friend and myself tuck ourselves around the corner of the garage.  Unfortunately, the garage door is wide open and a few shells go off just outside. A roll of paper towels in the garage catches fire.  A spark lands onto a cloth folding chair on which a few moments early, my daughter sat.  It too catches fire [later a careful reading of the chair's labels confirms that it indeed does not conform to strict fire regulations and should not be used near open flame].

Almost as quickly as it started, the flames and explosions subside and we are able to dowse the area with a garden hose.  Whew.  Good thing we moved the gas cans away earlier. In fact the ground is pretty well scorched where they once sat.

So that's how the evening ended... everyone rated the finale a very memorable 5+!  And I've got some ideas about what to do different next year:

             - more cakes less shells
             - better tubes for the mortars
             - get some ammo cases to hold the fireworks
             - have a fire extinguisher ready
             - no lighting fireworks when an open box is present

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This year I flew to Islamorada in the Florida Keys to shoot their show.  All our fireworks and supplies had to come by truck which was also the source of great tension when my partner and I.  Our flights did not arrive in Miami until late Monday night (July 1).  Then we still had to drive to the Keys. When we arrived at our resort we discovered our truck had not yet arrived (it should have been there around 4:00 p.m.).

The next morning we woke and went to the park where we were to set up the display and to meet the display sponsors.  Guess what, still no truck.  At around 9:30 a.m., we had our first contact with the truck driver.  He was near Naples, Fl, about 3 hours out.  That was our last contact with him until he final showed up around 5:30 p.m.  We had lost a full day of set up time.  We did manage to bust butt and get all our racks unloaded and set in position (with some local help) before sundown.  Oh we also found out we were short on support lumber for the racks.

July 3 was a busy day.  We got to the shoot site around 6:30 a.m.  We quickly pulled the boxes of shells off the truck and did a shell count.  We had 156 3inch shells, 148 assorted 4inch shells plus 12 triple break shells (about 1/2 the 4inch shells were specialty shells, rings, star patterns brocade crowns etc).  And, around 180 5inch shells, again about 1/2 of these were specialty shells.  Because of limited space (we actually set up on a ball field) 5 inch shells were the largest we could safely shoot.

The rest of July 3 was spent dropping and fusing the shells to our time delays.  We ended this day a little after 6:00 p.m., totally exhausted from the Florida Keys heat.  (Ever notice how there is never any shade to set up fireworks under).

Now we arrive at July 4th, show day.  We get to the shoot site a little before 8:00 a.m. and finish fusing the ground show items, 6 300 shot Colorful Worlds,  3  150 shot Happy Stars,  2  150 shot Titanium Salutes, 4  3inch 25 shot finale boxes, 2  3inch 25 shoot salute boxes, 2  49 shot Gl ittering Crosettes and 6  25 shot Red Crosettes.   By noon we had the ground show laid out and had begun wiring the show.  By mid afternoon we were done wiring the show and ready to test our circuits.  We had problems with two of the circuits but they were easily solved.

Because we had more 3inch shells then racks we decided to pull the first rack of (24) 3inch mortars to the side to use to hand light and reload.  My partner had never hand lit a show before, so he got the honors while I manned the control panel.

We dispersed ground with aerial until the grand finally.  The Finally started with the two 150 shot happy stars, followed shortly by the remaining 150 shot Titanium salute,  then the 25 shot finale boxes and the 25 shot salute boxes and 30 five inch shells and 20 four inch shells.  All in all the "Grand Finally" lasted around 2 minutes.  The crowd went nuts.   After the show the sponsors told us it was the best show they ever had and wanted us to come back next year.   Gee, another trip to the Keys.

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My 4th of July buying season started for me when I made a trip out to Victory Fireworks in Wisconsin to purchase quite a few cases of fireworks. I made a purchase of a pyromate Mini-96 firing panel to electrically fire my shows shortly thereafter. This was 
the number one best investment that I made next to the fireworks. My next trip found me going to Boomland in Missouri to pickup some more items during the first weekend in June. Over the next couple of weeks, I purchased a few more items from local vendors to complete all of my firework purchases for my upcoming shows. 
My first show was scheduled for Saturday, June 15th at a relatives property. This property makes shooting quite easy since it is about 5 acres big and you don't have to worry about massive amounts of fallout from the shells and cakes. My brother-and-law and me along with the help of my sister setup the entire show. It took about 5 hours to complete the setup. The setup consisted of attaching each cake to a flat board for stability. I used duct tape to attach each cake and put 6 cakes on each 6 foot board. This process is a little time consuming, but I have not had a cake tip over yet. Next, on one end of a piece 
of quickmatch, I inserted an electric match and the other end of the quickmatch was inserted 
onto each visco fuse of each cake. Both ends were secured with masking tape. This method helps fire even the most stubborn visco fuses. Once all of the cakes were setup in this manner, I turned my attention to digging holes for the mortars. Once again, my brother-and-law and I dug 22 holes for the mortars which ranged in size from 2.5" up to 6". This process was a chore in itself. Next year, I am going to purchase enough racks to prevent all of that work. Once the mortars were securly set in the ground, we started loading the shells into each mortar and attaching electric match to each shell. The next 
step in the process was to securely fasten the 6 finale boxes and attach the electric match 
to each fuse. The last step in the whole process was to attach the leads from each electric match into the field modules of the pyromate mini-96 system and running the cables back to the actual firing panel and do the continuity checks to make sure everything was connected correctly - it was! I attached the 6 finale boxes to 3 separate radiomatch devices so that I could detonate the finale remotely. By this time, the skies were getting dark and it was not due to the onset of nightfall - a thunderstorm was quickly approaching. So, the three of us cleaned up all of our materials which were used to setup the show and prepared ourselves for the actual firing of the show. As soon as the area was cleared and the camcorder was set, I started firing the show. 
I started off with three strobe pots firing simultaneously from 3 different boards spread apart by about 150 feet. You can do this with most firing panels due to the ability to daisychain the cables. Therefore, my first 12 queues were dedicated to firing three 
items at a time. After the strobe pots burned for awhile which gave a kinda cool effect, I started igniting the cakes one after the other spacing them out accordingly. However, the 
weather was not cooperating and I had to start firing most of the items quicker than I wanted to. After the first 12 queues which were firing 3 items at a time, the next 12 queues were setup to fire 2 items at a time. These were the bigger cakes like the Brother's 
Heavy weights, Thunder Kings, Master of Orions, Explorers, etc. After those 12 queues 
finished, the last 12 queues were dedicated to shells. I sent up anywhere from 1 shell to 5 shells with the press of a toggle switch. Now, it was time for the finale, I ignited all 6 finale boxes with the help of my Radiomatch remote controlled device. The whole show 
completed in about 12 minutes and we had to start tearing out all of the electronic equipment quickly due to lightening, thunder, and rain. Once the storm passed, we went back out to the shoot site and cleaned up the remaining debris. For the first show of the year 
and using a firing panel for the first time, I was quite pleased with the results. 
My next show was the following weekend at another relatives local subdivison. I did not have as much room as the previous weekend, so I scaled back the shells to only 2.5" thru 4" for safety reasons. I setup the show the same way as before except the first 12 queues 
fired two cakes at a time and the next 12 queues fired two cakes at a time. I mixed in small, medium, and large cakes for variety. The next 12 queues were the shells and the finale 12 queues were set aside for 12 different finale items. With my experience from the week before, I was able to get the show setup quicker with the help from some of my friends. 
This time I fired the show to music in the background hitting the queues at the appropriate times. Everyone seemed to like it alot and everything went off without a hitch and the total time of the show was about 17 minutes. I think the hit of this particular show was the 25 shot 3" Titanium Salute cake that completed the finale. 
The following weekend was the weekend before the 4th of July and I put a real small show on at my sister's place. It is along a lake front and it also is a very tight shooting area. So, I scaled my items down to much smaller cakes and no shells whatsoever. I used 
three different sets of 12 queues. The first two sets of 12 queues were dedicated to one cake each, therefore with each press of the button on the firing panel only one cake would fire. The finale was setup with the last 12 queues and there was one finale items for each queue. This was a very simple setup for the shooting conditions that I had to work with. 
Once again, I shot the show to music and the whole show was completed within 15 minutes. 
The last and final show was my 4th of July party at my house. I started preparing for the type of music on July 1, the fireworks on July 2, and attaching the items to the boards on July 3 along with making my quickmatch/electric match pieces. The morning of the 
4th was spent getting ready for my party. In the early afternoon, I wanted to start moving the boards out to their final destinations along with loading the mortars and such, but a Thunderstorm rolled in and spoiled most of the afternoon. Therefore, I did not get started 
with the final setup until 3 hours before darkness. With the help of a few friends and my brother-in-law, I was able to get all of the boards with the cakes on them to their final destination along with attaching the electric matches and connecting everything to the 
firing panel as indicated above. My show was setup in the following fashion. I used one of my Radiomatch devices to ignite an American Flag set piece along with some cakes which made color and noise during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner. Next, I dedicated the first 24 queues to small, medium, and large cakes. The next 12 queues were used for the shells 
which ranged in sizes from 1.75" thru 3" and were loaded into racks. The final 12 queues were used for all of the final large and extra large cakes which were staked down very securely since all of these would be shot during the finale along with one 4" salute to end everything. Once again, all of this would be shot on queue with music playing in the background. However, there was so much noise from this show that one could hardly hear the music. The show started with the playing of the Star Spangled Banner while the flag glowed and a mine cake along with a Red, White, and Blue Thunder King roared in the background. As the music continued, I set off mulitple cakes through the first 23 queues and then went to lobbing some shells into the sky for the next 12 queues. Then, I came back to start a mini finale of 14 class C and Baby B cakes all on one piece of quickmatch. Once all of this started to come to an end, I started popping the 12 finale queues one at a time with the final 2 queues being a 36 shot 2.5" titanium salute box and the 4" titanium salute shell. 
The show lasted for about 15 minutes with the finale going for nearly 2 minutes and there were people from all over the sub-division applauding when it finally came to an end. I never realized how many people were watching until it was all over. Next, came the cleanup! That was a real mess!

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WELL BOB, I STARTED OFF WITH THE EXCITEMENT OF THE UP COMMING HOLIDAY. I HOPE TO BE A PYRO TECHNISSION WHEN I REACH GEAZER AGE..JUST KIDDING IVE ALREADY STARTED IN MY CARREAR. I HAD A FIREWORKS PARTY WHICH NEEDED INVITING PEOPLE, DECORATIONS, AND SOO MUCH MORE. WE WATCHED A CITY FIREWORKS SHOW 1 DAY BEFORE MY FIREWORKS SHOW. IT WAS PRETTY GOOD BUT I HAD SEEN BETTER. I REALLY LIKED MY SHOW BECAUSE OF THE VARIATY OF FIREWORKS. IT WAS OUR BEST SHOW YET! THE SHELLS I BOUGHT DIDNT TURN OUT HOW I THOUGT THEY WOULD-THEY WERE TOO SMALL. LUCKILY I HAD REALLY NICE CAKES AND RELOADABLES. OVER ALL I LIKED THIS HOLIDAY. 

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my fourth of july was awsome.  i started around nine o'clock just when it was getting dark. the stuff i had included roman candles, about 22 different cakes, 42 shells (2 inches), rockets, silver jets, saturn missiles, firecracker mats and bricks and asst. ground items.  i began it all with a few snall cakes, 4 different shells and a few rockets. my brother and his friend helped me fire the stuff.  all of the cakes i had were awsome, i had a few from Brothers Pyrotecnics that were really awsome and colorful.  the shells i had were amazing.  i had about 42 of them and i was amazed by how  loud and high a 2 inch shell goes.  those were also very colorful and were a big part of my show i ended my show with 6 asst. shells, 5 of my best cakes i had, asst roman candles spread out across the yard and i put them in buckets of sand in a fan shape.  the finale was great it lasted about 4 minutes.  when i was done i was happy that no one was hurt and nothing was set on fire. this fourth of july was very special to me this year because we celebrated our freedom and we remembered the attacks on september 11th and we are still very happy that we are alive today and still have our freedom.
GOD BLESS AMERICA!

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I used techniques I learned on PyroUniverse.com in this year's show.  I purchased about $350 worth of goods from patriotic Fireworks in Elkton, MD.  My show consisted of fountains, repeaters and mortars.  I shot the show on a private piece of land that has a lake and artificial beach.  The beach was perfect, giving me plenty of sand to pack around my pieces to keep them from tipping.  For the main show, I lit 2-3 single repeaters at a time and used single fountains along with them for ground effects.  I would also shoot an occasional single mortar or mortar board to keep up the intensity.  For the finale, I assembled 4 stations on 24" X 24" plywood.  Using heavy duty velcro to fix the repeaters to the wood, I used a large fountain to begin each station, then used Visco to fuse in 4 - 5 repeaters in sequence.  I made sure that the repeaters would light while the previous one was finishing, thus I had about 10 seconds of overlap with each piece.  I placed each station about 20 ft. apart and lit them all at the same time.  What a great show!  While the stations fired, I supplemented the excitment with reloadable mortars from 5 buried tubes.  I saved a final barrage of shells from ten buried tubes that I pre-loaded and fused.  It earned my a standing ovation from about 100 people, most of whom I did not know!  Everything was lit using a road flare.  They burn very hot and steady, are weather proof and will light the fuse in one pass.  I find them to be perfect.  The pieces that impressed me and I would buy again are as follows:Ê

Strange Color fountain by Bothers - the loudest shrieking whistles I have ever heard from 1.4 g fireworks.
Double Trouble repeater by Orion - huge floral breaks with LOUD reports.
Bad Boy Cannister Shells - reloadable mortar from Brothers.  Great height and effects for the money.  I used 5 dozen of these.

Cheesehead fountain - Phantom - long lasting and very loud crackles.  Also has bright strobe effects.
Blond Joke repeater by Brothers - a heavyweight from Brothers, this is one bad-ass with 36 huge breaks.  I used 2 of these and will buy 4 next year for the finale.

Splendid Sound by ? - a Chinese import that looked tattered but this thing lit up the finale and had tons of reports.

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This years Pyro journey began late in the evening on July 2nd as I packed up several items left over from previous pyro trips and headed for Evanston Wyoming which is approximately 853 miles from my home base in the peoples republic of California.  I stopped by Salt Lake City on the way and picked up my two young cousins, 9 and 11, so they could partake in the festivities. We rolled into Evanston around 2 PM and established our base camp at the local Motel 6.  This Motel is close to many of the fireworks stores including Porters, Phantom, Jolly Jac's, and a Black Cat outlet store.  Our first stop was Jolly Jac's which looks like a large orange two story house and has a large assortment of goodies that could satisfy any pyro enthusiasts habit.  While at Jolly Jac's we took advantage of their 3 for 1 deals and purchased a number of the "Loud Little suckers", and "SkySpider" tubes which were great fun during the day.  The loud little sucker is essentially a mini mortar tube which shoots a large cased firecracker about 35 feet, while the SkySpiders shoots 2 large spider like weighted streamers high in the air.  Our next and last supply stop took us to Porters which is actually the first fireworks store you see when entering Wyoming heading eastbound on 80.  I've been to Porters several times in the past and was surprised to see that they had completely remodeled and expanded their store from the last time I visited.  The store used to have a small customer area where a clerk would retrieve items for you from shelves behind a counter. This time however they had removed the counter as well as several walls and had a large shopping floor similar to the layout at Shelton's in Indiana, only smaller.  This was more enjoyable as it is always more fun to pull the packages off the shelves by yourself.  The people at Porters were very helpful as well as friendly to the kids that were tagging along with me. While at Porters we picked up the following items for our show:  Rambo shell kit(Beihai), Shogun 1K roll of crackers,  Midnight Dawn(Brothers Professional series/ Kick Ass!), Voices of Century(Brothers/mine), and a number of smaller items for the kids.  Next we headed back to the hotel and staged our goodies on one of the beds along with the items I had brought along with me.  After this we went to the abandoned hotel / lot next store to our motel and found an old piece of plywood that we would use for the base of our show.  After using ductape to cover up the splintered edges of the plywood, to keep from damaging the car, my girlfriend had helped tape the cardboard tubes(5) to the base.  I found that the cardboard tubes used in plotting machines work great for shells as they are 1.75 inner diameter and the walls are very thick.  Next I taped the following candles to the outside of the mortar tubes angled away from the tube openings by inserting makeshift cardboard shims near the top: 1 Pc. Dixie Thunder(Maverick) I think), 1 Pc. Chirping Oriole(Westlake), and 1 Pc. Shogun Candle.  I then started fusing the other items together by using several Red crackling whips, this actually works pretty well for filling in the wait between each firework.  The first item was a small round aerial item with pearl in it's title, followed by a 100 shot Kung Fu cake.  Next down the line I had Brothers Space Fighter helicopters interspersed with small sunflowers so each large helicopter would be followed by the smaller Sunflower.  This led to the mortar tubes which I had loaded with shells from the following kits: 1 Pc. from Rambo Kid, 1 Pc. from a Great Grizzly Predator, 1 Pc. Black Cat triple break, and 1 Red, white and blue shell from a Vulcan Boom Man kit. On the other side of the tubes I laid out the larger aerials:  1st came the Brothers cake "Voices of Century", followed by another brothers cake "America Invincible", and leading into the Midnight Dawn which I selected for the finale cake.  Now for the set location, you see in the past you could go anywhere and light off or shoot anything your little heart desires. This year however, the state of Wyoming had placed a ban on lighting fireworks outside of city limits so we had to find a place in the city to unleash the pint up pyrotechnic fury which is trapped within us, and only allowed to be released but a few times each year.  We drove down the street a few blocks from our motel and noticed some other pyromaniacs staging their show in the county Rodeo parking lot, kick ass! we decided to join with our festive parking lot brethren.  Our main fireworks unit went off pretty well with the exception of a ground level break and by the end of all the havoc all five cardboard tubes were engulfed in flames.   Now it's inevitable that every year I deal with the police in one way or another and this year was no different.  The Evanston police pulled into our parking lot of festive fire, and drove up to each of the groups residing their letting us know that while he was a city officer and didn't really care if we were lighting off fireworks, the rodeo parking lot was county property and they weren't as understanding as he was.  I don't think the California troopers would have been as understanding, do you!

Hope you all had a great independence day.

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I enjoyed your site!  I live in a town where "safe and sane" fireworks are normally legal, though they're illegal in the rest of the county.  We usually do several fountains, spinners, poppers and sparklers.  This year, however, there was a complete fireworks ban in Colorado due to the forest fires.  After the public fireworks (which were great) everybody went home to bed.  Our neighborhood was completely quiet.  Our family did the best we could under the circumstances.  That day, we had a picnic in the front yard, and Êmy 21-year-old son shot off his two-liter water rocket several times for the benefit of his parents and grandparents and sister.  He put in a payload of paper whirligigs, which came down from a height of 100 feet, and looked almost like a big firework.  We also shot off rockets made of film canisters loaded with vinegar and baking soda.  In the evening, we got out the disco lamps and LED toys, as well as the lightsticks.  Oh, and we let off some caps and party poppers.  It was OK, but not the same. 
 
I was interested to see how the ban affected other celebrations.  In September, all our neighbors flew flags for several months.  But on July 4th, very few of them even flew a flag.  I think people just gave up on the holiday.  I had several flags out, along with pinwheels and Christmas lights and streamers. 
 
I'm very much hoping the ban is lifted next year.  I remember when I was a girl and fireworks were banned in the town I was living in.  I think I was about eleven.  That year we ran around the backyard with lighted candles.  On any other occasion that would have been fun, but it wasn't much of a Fourth.   This year, lighted candles would have been illegal in Colorado too, so we didn't even do that.  So we'll pray for rain and hope for a better year next year!
 
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I had a wonderful 4th of July in Louisiana/Mississippi. Most of my fireworks were purchased online. But who can resist going to the firework stands once there up. It rained on the Gulf Coast up until 6:00. The sun set,and you could see the bonfires all the way down the beach. For the most part Brothers brand seems to be the best made fireworks for the money. I was pleasantly surprised by a few black cat items, it seems as though they are finally trying to compete with Brothers.

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This year me and a friend had our annual 4th of July Fireworks event at his cabin in Northern MN.  A great shooting location right by the lake.  We began stocking up on fireworks in early May at the Phantom Fireworks store in Wisconsin.  This year in Minnesota fountains, sparklers, ground spinners, and other novelties were legalized after 61 years of ignorant prohibition.  Some MN legislators are hoping to get more aerial consumer fireworks legalized next year, so if you live in Minnesota tell your local rep.  you want more fireworks. Most Minnesotans have always traveled to surrounding states like the Dakotas and Wiscosin for fireworks, it's a bigger thrill this way then just heading over to the local Target to pick up your goods.  Reports so far show this year with the recent legalization has not had an increase in hospital visits or fires. 

We seem to buy more and more fireworks each year.  We utilize coupons throughout the season from Phantom fireworks and utilize my Premiere card for 2 for 1 on everything and other freebies. Most of the fireworks we get are Phantom brand, but a few Brothers and Black Cat and smaller companies items are used. 

We began the fireworks on July 3rd with a little preview of what's to come.  We started with smaller rockets, bottle rockets and some 6 oz. and larger.  The 6 oz. rockets were not very good, usually these Wolf Pack rockets from Phantom work well;   I've had better luck with the 8 oz.  Some repeaters on this night included the Cloudbuster comet, which was ok, and a few other smaller things.  We also set off a #300 Crackling Diamond rack of 4, which I felt was not worth the money, even at 2 for 1.  

On the big day of July 4th we moved all our boxes of fireworks down by the lake for the night.  As the evening came so did the whistles and bangs heard from all over the lake.  We immediatley jumped into some of our larger repeaters for the evening including the Raptor, Phantasm, Barbarian Blast, Pyro-Pandemonium, Molotov Cocktail, Rain of Fire, Painted Galaxy, and others.  

We started by just 1 or 2 repeaters at a time, but worked our way to 4 and 5 at a time, which becomes a barrage of shots, and some effects can get lost.  An example of this was the Wild West by Brothers, it volleys up shots at 5 at a time, this repeater can stand alone for good effect, but when you mix with other repeaters it's unique way of shooting or volleying up the shots is lost.  The Wild West was a definite winner, good mix of different type of colors, and nice size breaks, a definite must for next year.  Try this one if you haven't before, we did and were impressed.

We also tried a new 500 gram powder high performance repeater for this year from Phantom.  It was Phantoms first try at the 500g ones, and they had about 3 repeaters packing this amount.  We chose the 16 shot Untamed Retribution, the name alone and graphics on the packaging sold me on this one(Take a look on fireworks.com if you haven't seen it).  We tried one alone at first, but you may want to add something smaller to fill in the lower altitude range as these shots go very high.  There are no effects on the way up for the shells but when it shoots you get a nice reassuring THUMP as it goes, which get faster towards the end.  The effects were some very nice gold palm trees type bursts with crackle along with multi colored stars in other shots.  The shots are very pretty and very large, but it's not very exciting, some whistle or crackling tail on the way up would help, but we ended up mixing this with a 100 shot Air Defense which shoots crackling comets up for a long time, very nice effect in a little repeter, this and the Untamed Retribution do well, as it adds some sound in.  

This year we also tried the new Grucci tubes from Phantom, these got nice reviews so I picked up some to find out what the fuss was all about.  I only had 2 of the No. 300 Broadway Brocade Silver-Green.  This tube was absolutley fantastic!  I will for sure get more next year or even this year.  It's not even a very big tube, but produced the best color and break I have seen in a consumer class firework.  It was absolutley fantastic.  I used my last one to end off the show, as a goodnight to everyone.  It was a truely WOW item.  I hope they make a rack of all the different ones they had for next year, if not I will myself.  They had a #200 version available of different breaks, so I'd like to see difference between the 2.  If you buy from Phantom don't pass these up, and they were very reasonably priced for such a good tube.  

Also on the tube side another wow item was the Blue Wave.  A nice solid burst of unique blue neon stars, very expansive in the sky.  Comes in a very large tube.  I noticed they had a Red Wave available,  next year I plan on racking these 2 colors and a Silver Sonic warhead which is a nice bright white for a red, white, and blue effect. 

I was pretty impressed this year again with the Pryo-pandemonium and Rain of Fire.  The rain of fire seemed to have a white crackle and not red like last year or I may be mistaken, but the palm tree were a nice all red, very big break.  Don't pass on this one.  The pryo pandemonium has excellent whistle effects and really gets attention.

The best rockets I used were the Powerdome rockets which should be good considering they have a small shell as their payload, Not the best color but a nice unique round break,  different types of breaks in the pack would be nice they were all the same, but the launch sound and report and large break are all there for a good rocket choice.  

We got much more wild in how we handle our reloadable mortars this year, instead of the tube we tried lighting the long fuse and holding on to the shell and throwing it out into the lake before going off, it would usually land in the lake wait a few seconds and send off a nice reflection on the surface.  Others seemed to like this way, but I enjoy the satisfying thump as the Aerial Rampage shells leave the tube.  We used both Radical Recoil and Aerial Rampage shells for this year as we have in the past.

On the fountain side of things which was just about a neighbor across the lake was doing; we had a a bunch, though mostly lame.  The cone foutains like the royal flush shot high, were bright but didn't last long and not much of any special effect.  The Sting of the Scorpian and Apache firedance lasted quite long had great effects but didn't shoot very high, if I could find a fountain with these effects but shot higher I would be happier with fountains.  Still don't pass up on the Sting or Apache, they are great and last a long time.

My jet lighters stopped working partial way through the night so I used and some others started using sparklers to light items as we had so many sparklers.  The only bad thing about sparklers is they take awhile to light but once they are going they burn very hot and light other fuses and sparklers fast.  

As the night went on so did the fireworks and crazy things that went on, like throwing reloadable shells by hand, and throwing in grosses of bottle rockets and packs of firecrackers into the campfire to all go off at once.  Theres always a few left over in the fire that seem to go off later on after most go off when you do it this way, so watch out for the late ones to fire, but the suprise adds to the fun. 

One person had some huge salutes and those are nice to light once in awhile, sound like a shotgun blast with a thump to the chest, but some of the smaller ones sounded no different in loudness to the breaks on the Rain of Fire.  We did few of these during the day, timing them to hit the water and make a big splash.  

There were a couple dozen people at our event a lot of watchers and a lot of people lighting stuff.  We had so many items I can't remember seeing them all or recalling if they were any good.  It was chaos at times with stuff exploding all over but the excitement was great all night long.  We had good weather the whole time we were up there, which was first.  The Northern Lights were also visible as the night went on.  I did bring my new miniDV camera to film some of the show but actually didn't use it much as I was busy lighting things and was having to much fun watching rather than aiming a camera and making sure it captures things right.  I would like to video select items on not such a busy night.  

Thats about it for this year.  Will have to make another trip to buy more fireworks for this summer, I'm nearly out of the good stuff but have a lot of assorted rockets left over.  Another great 4th of July, plenty of fireworks, and great weather.
Wishing yours was also great.  Look forward to another wild night next year 2003!  Can't come soon enough, I wish for the same weather next year too! Till then... BOOM...

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The evening before the 4th went slowly.ÊÊI had taken the whole week off for vacation, so I spent the earlier part of the week preparing.Ê I even went to the trouble of putting a few paving stones in the back yard to set the fireworks on - well, I had been meaning to do it for a while but having the vacation gave me a good opportunity. I also went shopping so I'd be well stocked up on beer and food for the guests.Ê Anyway, I couldn't sleep well Wednesday night, partially because I kept hearing other folks setting off the occasional bottle rocket or firecrackers, and even a mortar shell once in a while.Ê I finally woke up at around 8 the next day and got up, lounged around for a while (as it was too early to really set anything off, I didn't want to wake the neighbors up on their day off). 
                  
 Background: I live in a suburb in Minnesota, not TOO far out from the metro area but far enough that it's fairly quiet and peaceful, and people are reasonably friendly; the neighborhood is safe, but the kids (in their late teens) do tend to be rowdy from time to time.Ê I was worried until late Thursday night that nobody else would be setting off fireworks and that the folks around me would be annoyed by my display, or by the noise.Ê Therefore I was hesitant to set off anything noisy.  

Doing some dishes around 10:30, I heard a thump from nearby, but didn't think anything of it.Ê A little later I happened to be glancing around the room and saw that my walls had turned pink.Ê Looking out the window, I saw a huge plume of thick red smoke from one of the neighbor's back yards.Ê Well, couldn't let that go unchallenged.. I unwrapped one of my Black Cat daytime streamer mortars and set that off in the back yard. The noise was more impressive than the streamer, which, although nice for daytime, was rather boring.Ê But it was nice to have some daytime fireworks.  

A friend came over around 11:30, and we started up the grill for a little lunch.Ê Set off a few smoke bombs and another one of those streamer mortars, then other folks started appearing around 2 or 3.Ê We set off smoke bombs, jumping jacks, and then a few bottle rockets, cautiously.Ê When nobody complained and we didn't see any sign of the police, I decided it would be OK to set off a few firecrackers, then an M-70 or two, then I gave one of my buddies a large string of ladyfingers. (400 count?)Ê That was fun.Ê A friend said he thought the ladyfingers were louder than the regular firecrackers (because they had more powder in them) and I couldn't convince him otherwise. oh well.Ê He tried to make a firecracker out of a jumping jack by wrapping plastic around it to cover the hole in the side.Ê That didn't really work; but some of the other jumping jacks exploded anyway. 
                  
 We had some fun by linking all of the fuses from a packÊof bottle rockets and setting them all off at once; nice barrage.Ê As it started getting dark and my friends filled up on food, I decided it was time to start setting off the fountains and such.Ê That took a long time.Ê There were a lot of them.Ê I'm pretty much sick of fountains now.Ê So many of them were just the same effects in different orders...one or two were pretty nice...I was impressed by blues and purples, and oranges.Ê The regular greens and reds and whites were nice but just too common.Ê I'd rather buy more expensive fountains and have the nicer colors.
 
I set off a regular 5 ball roman candle, then went to one of the heavy duty Super Galaxy 8 shot with pearl and whirlwind.Ê Those were cool.Ê Set off some 36 inch sparklers behind the fountains for something to look at between fountains.Ê Gave the crowd some sparklers to amuse them (it seemed like they were getting sick of the endless stream of similar fountains).Ê I set off a 200 string of firecrackers, which perked them up a bit.Ê The string left a nice hole in my back yard.Ê All the weeds were brown and the area was sprinkled with red dust and bits and pieces of firecrackers.  

After hearing the noise, the kids of the neighbor from across the street came over and asked if I had any duds; their dad was trying to make homemade firecrackers.Ê Well, seeing as how I spent several hundred dollars on fireworks and had NO hope of using them all up, I gave them two packs of Black Cat bottle rockets, firecrackers, and lady fingers, then followed them back to say hi and be sociable.Ê The two neighbors across the street had merged to have a single barbecue, and were in the process of setting off the fountains and sparklers they'd bought at the local Sam's Club.Ê They had a pretty nice assortment, but not having gone across the border didn't have any of the REAL fun stuff. ;)Ê So I talked to them for a while, and one of the neighbors was so happy to have some bottle rockets and firecrackers he gave me a huge (5lb) package of fresh steaks from his freezer.Ê So I'll be grilling next week ;)  

Five pounds of steaks was a little too much for probably $2 worth of fireworks, so I went back over later to give them another bagful, mostly fountains, but a few more bottle rockets and a 200 strip of firecrackers, a few skyrockets, and a couple roman candles, then went back to join my friends again.Ê It was getting darker, and at least three other yards had fireworks going on, so my confidence was boosted. The neighbors across the street seemed thrilled with our fireworks so far, so I decided to start doing some repeaters...very noisy, very high, and made me very worried of attracting too much attention.  Incidentally, I had never fired a repeater before, though I have probably seen them a few times before.  I started off with a 48-shot Colored Pearls, then a 100-shot Magical Barrage. I really liked the 100 Shot Magical Barrage.Ê Plenty of flying pearls, and a nice comet to finish it off.Ê Definitely get that one again.Ê With a 100-shot Magical Barrage, who needs roman candles? (the plain kind, anyway)  I really liked the Star Dust fountain, too.Ê I would buy that again, as well. I did a Kaleidascope (sp?), Garden In Spring, and 7-shot Toot & Twirl.Ê To be honest I don't remember them being all that spectacular...I think I also did a 16 shot Comet Battle or something like that.Ê The only one that stuck out in my mind was the Emerald City, by Phantom.Ê  It was pretty much my favorite of the evening.Ê Well worth the $14.00 for 2 price.Ê It was a great finale piece that left the crowd applauding and hooting.  In between fountains and repeaters, I set off 6 mortars - 4 of the smaller Phantom single shots, which were nothing to write home about, and two Cannon brand 1" mortars - Colorful Peony (not bad) and Glittering Comet (or something like that) which was actually really really good.Ê I've decided I really love comets.  
After Emerald City, I decided I was done for a while.Ê It was around 11:00 and I didn't want to keep anyone trying to sleep awake... But I ran back over to the neighbors, who were still setting off fireworks, with a few more pieces, including my biggest piece, the 21 shot Special Troops (I think), a few other fountains and repeaters, and another 100-shot Magical Barrage.Ê Everyone loved the Magical Barrage and the 21 shot repeater.Ê I think we set off one other repeater but it wasn't that special. I even had a nice chat with the neighbors I was so afraid of ticking off with all the noise.Ê We talked about getting together again next year for an even bigger show!  Then I went home, weary, sore from sun and mosquito bites, and covered in soot.Ê Took one look at the back yard and pile of garbage there, and took a few minutes to put everything perishable or non-water-friendly inside, and fell into bed.Ê In the morning it took me several hours to clean up, but I didn't mind.Ê I still didn't use up all my fireworks. 

Firecracker ratings:  Black Cats - always good: 7/10  Brothers - average. 5/10  Roller Coaster.Ê- great! 8/10  Red Devil - average. 5/10  Thunder Bomb - old favorite: 6/10  Zebra - WOW! 10/10  Wolf Pack - average. 5/10  Thunder Bomb Red Celebration Crackers - average. 5/10 

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The show went great.
Americana was a great new cake for 2002. The Lidu mines were a huge hit I had three go off together it was quite nice! The Explorer cakes was a big hit with the crowd. Other good cakes. DaggerFall, Super Crackling Rainbow from 2001

For the finale I used a 50shot angle cake filled with tripple and double break shells followed by seventeen super rockets and 50 dragon salute shells. WOW! what a display! Food consisted of a whole pig, Salmon, Tri-Tip, Giant Oysters, Chicken, Lasagna, and Salad Etc, Etc, Etc, 

The show lasted an hour and a half. No problems during the 4th of july show but after the show. My Grandmother almost got ran over by her own car if it was not for my mom's fast reflexes by puttin her foot on the breaks. Everything was ok and knobody got hurt. But it scared the shit out of me as I saw the aftermath and I had know idea what was going on. Well the show was video taped but one tape did not come out and the other has yet to be seen. Sorry this was short but I have a lot of E-mail catching up to do.

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I want to start out by saying that I had a pretty good 4th. I had lots of fireworks this year but nothing too big because I live in NJ where not even sparklers are legal. I was able to stop at Jab's on I-95 in South Carolina(which i highly reccomend, it has the guaranteed lowest prices on 95). I picked up some saturn missiles, firecrackers, roman canldes, and some small stuff there. I was able to find someone online who sold fireworks and shipped to me, so I got some more firecrackers, bottle rockets, roman canldes, and tons of other stuff. I also had a big box of other fireworks leftover from previous years and a rocket assorment. Everything started on the 3rd when I went to a relatives house to watch the biggest fireworks show in NJ. It was a good show but I really wanted to do my own fireworks. I heard tons of people shooting off their own fireworks and I couldn't wait to get some of my stuff out. I can't really do much in my backyard because its in a neighborhood. I go to a relatives house about 15 minutes away which has a huge yard and a good spot for fireworks. I was planning on going there on the 4th but it was canceled due to the heat and rescheduled for the 5th. I was very disappointed because I was pretty excited about doing stuff on the 4th. On the 4th I just went to the beach and later went out to dinner. After dinner we drove to an overlook to watch some of the NYC fireworks. Down the hill on the beaches, I saw people doing big repeaters and firecrackers and artillery shells, it was awesome. I got home and we heard some people doing bottle rockets so we got some out and did them. Nothing too exciting on the 4th. On the 5th we went at 5 and started doing some small fireworks like planes and bees. We continued to shoot off my small stupid stuff to just get rid of it. Then we did a bunch of bottle rockets which are one of my favorite kinds of fireworks. We had regular moon travelers and whistling. We did those for a little then we moved on to some larger rockets which had great distance and good colors but not good sound. I had a pack of texas pop rockets that I did. They were just as loud as a bottle rocket but went really high. I also had tons of crackling balls which we did which are small but neat. I also had some parachutes which are pretty neat, and I did a double parachute which didn't work well. I really want a parachute batallion for next year. We stopped to eat and waited a little while till it became a little darker. Once it was a little darker we did some roman canldes and more of the bigger rockets. We also did some of my larger fountains. We had to go soon so we had to wrap it all up. We decided to do 2 of my red devil 10 ball roman canldes simultaneously with a saturn missile in the back for a finale. I'm sure you think this is a small finale but remember this is New Jersey and I didn't plan it out. The saturn missile was great and really loud. The roman canldes were nice but I was disappointed because they had no report. This didn't matter because everyone enjoyed our little show. I still have tons of extras for next year. Next year I plan to spend about $100 on some bigger and better stuff. I want some good rockets, good roman canldes, bigger saturn missiles, and some small repeaters. I had 2 roman candle holders/rocket launchers that I bought from superiorfireworks.com for $1 each. I highly reccomend these as they are durable and great for all rockets and roman canldes. I can't wait till I go to South Carolina again so I can stock up for next year. Next year I am going to purchase some fuse and plan out a show with a better and louder finale. My story will be much more exciting next year! I hope you all had an awesome 4th and god bless america!

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Well as you know the state of colorado has had its fair share of forestfires.And convieniently they all seemed to happen close to the fourth of july .There fore our local bonehead mayor has banned all fireworks INCLUDING PARTY POPPERS AND SNAPS !!!! even the proffesional displays were cancelled. Now this may seem reasonable Êexept for the fact that campfires,barbecues ,and cigarretes thrown out the window have not been banned . And the funniest part is all three of those have caused these fires.
 ÊÊWell before all this happened i had spent a very large amount of money on fireworks as soon as the local tent popped up. Every time Igot my money from mowing lawns I would zoom over to the tent and squander all of my money on all sorts of fireworks .Then Mr.mayor hippocrit announced a statewide fireworks ban including fireworks sales .
My freind and I decided we wanted jello So we took a walk over to the Grocery store ÊAs I walked by the fireworks tent on my way to the store I noticed a spray painted sign "4 4 1 sale" I couldn`t resist .My freind and I zipped over to the stand ;the owner was furious he had spent days unpacking boxes,setting up the displays , Typing up price stickers ,Checking inventory, and locking up at night .On top of that he was about to lose thousands of dollars .We decided "Wow Four for 1'' . So i got a basket and started grabbing handfulls of fireworks .The best thing about this is they had a "name your price bin ''( they were slightly damaged fireworks mostly just missing Êlabels and such '' I got an entire brick of crackling jumping jacks for 3.00$ An entire pack of mini Cuckoos for 25 cents A Êchampagne fountain cake for really cheap and Êa bunch of other stuff (normally 120$ for 30 bucks Ê. My freind Êgot 40 dollars worth but she went out of state , lucky.
Well the Fourth of july came around and bit me on the A** .I woke up to the sound of fire trucks and police men driving around looking for party popper wielding 6 year olds to arrest .I walked over to my freinds house and we spent a few hours watching boring Tv. shows Untill it was dark.My freinds and I went outside to an eerie silence . We walked up to the hill to see if anyone possibly might light a firework . We sat there looking at the city as normal as any other day . With the ocassional pop and a little flash then a siren . So over all this was the lamest fourth of july ever!!!!!

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Just wanted to update you on sales in Missouri. Very few people around the St. Louis area said sales were up this year. Out of fifteen tents surveyed only four said sales were up over last year. All the others said sales were about even or were a little less than last year or had no comment (which usually means a bad season). This trend was also noticed in the amount of fireworks shot around the neighborhood - considerably down from the past years. In northeastern Missouri where a lot of people come from Illinois and Iowa all locations seemed to suffer. Locations were saying no comment to one tent that claimed business was down 70% from the previous year. The only stronger sales on a continual basis came from southwest Missouri where all tents said they were at least 10% up over the last year. Any comments from you regarding sales would be appreciated. 

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My july 4th was a great turnout.In the daytime my brother and I lit off 3 grosses of bottle rockets which took all afternoon.Others in the neighborhood did the same thing in the day.At night our yard became the center of attraction as we did 3 cases worth of aerials.All the neighbors love the items we had. Our best item was the "millenium bug" by brothers.When my brother and I did that device everyone literally stopped what they were doing in other yards and was "AMAZED" at the performance of that firework. For some reason the "wonders of the world" did'nt perform very well this year, maybe I got a bad one this year.I had so much stuff that it took 3 nights to light off. Most of it was all kinds of fountains which are now legal here in connecticut finally after much state litigation. 

My items were:

BROTHERS:
millenium bug
turn of century
killer alligator
china dragon
howling tiger
strobe lights

ASSORTED ROCKETS:
cannon "vortex rockets"
cannon 6oz rocket

1 belt of 800 firecrackers
About 300 assorted fountains
georgia peach/good
nitro assortment fountains/excelllent
Large assortment of "TNT" fountains/very high quality 

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My Fourth of July went well. I was very excited to finally break out my fireworks again. Getting fireworks is always a challenge because New York State seems to think I shouldn't have any. Therefore, I couldn't get any new fireworks this year, so i only had what i saved from last year. This included 4 cuckoo fountains, a large dragon blast fountain, 2 magical 10 shot roan candles, 2 wild geese rockets, 1 glitterous rocket, about 10 packs of atomic bomb firecrackers, 15 packs of jumping jacks, and a bunch of air travellers and whistling bottle rockets. Not the best selection of fireworks, but it had to do. I lit a lot of bottle rockets during the day and undoubtedly the whistling air travellers were the best. Later in the night i lit the rest of the fireworks. I was suprised by how good the cuckoo fountains performed given their size and price. The magical roman candles were horrible. I wouldn't recommend those to anyone. Everything went off well without any problems. Luckily the cops were no where to be seen, making my day even better.

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This Year I started buying fireworks in april that way i could get the best ones possible.  I spent about $600 this year on all types of fireworks from little bottle rockets to 3 inch shells.  On saturday june 29 my family and i went on vacation to the outer banks of north carolina.  And each night leading up to the fourth i shot about 12 artillery shells and about 3 repeaters along with other little items.  This got the people aware that i had something big up my sleave waiting for them on the fourth.   This year for the first time i had numbered all of my items in which they would be shot this really helped cut the down time in between items. Also i got creative and set up some roman candles at angles on boards so that the colors would cross in the air and i set up repeaters at angles just to spice it up a little bit.  At about 7:00 i went down on the beach and i set up my area where i would be shooting.  And then my buddies and i sat around and launched bottle rockets and other small stuff just to play around and get our appitiets wet.  Then at about 8:30 i went and got all the big stuff.  Then around 9:15 i took a break that way all the spectators could view the professional show that was being shot about 2 miles away, It was a little boring in my opinion.  Then around  9:30 firing resumed.  Then when it came time for my finally i used the method you should in your PYRO 2 video about tying the mortor fuses around a main fuse and taping the fuses of repeaters to a main fuse.  This worked extremely well and really helped set my show off from anybody elses.  To end the show of i had a 3 inch titanium salute that just rocked the building and set off car alarms.  Then the most rewarding part of the show for me came and that was when the people came up to me and told me that it was beautiful and that they loved it, this really makes me happy and makes me want to do it again. After my show was over the beach pretty much got empty.   The only problem is i don't know how to top it next year.

Here is a list of my favorite items that i used.

Tulip Rockets - Just awsome
Thuderous King - Loud
Pop Goes The Fountain - Long and loud crackle
Noisy Shells - Extremly loud salute shells (the best)
Flower Thunder Giant W/titanium - Illegal? but biggest aireal breaks
Red White and Blue Salute - Great Patriotic colors
Flag Day - Also Great Patriotic colors
White Chrysanthimum in Air - Huge white breaks that hit hard
Color Crackling Balls -  Just cool and alot better than regular crackling balls
Butterfly - A russian repeater that gave very beautiful crackling breaks
2 1/4 shells - Beautiful
3 inch Shells - Even better that 2 1/4 and loud.

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hey bob, this year for the 4th of july i went up to seattle like i do every summer and i went to boom city to get my fireworks where i have an uncle that owns a stand. my freind and i only spent around 100 bucks each but my uncle gives us free stuff too so be only had to buy the big stuff we wanted and he gave us the usual fun stuff like a couple of bricks of firecrackers each and also a couple gross of bottle rockets. we split money on a great grizley unleash the beast 1000 firecracker tau roll w/a head bomb at the top and that was fun. we got all our fireworks on the 1st of july so the main thing we did until the fourth was lighting off all our small day time fireworks in the forest. the main artillary shells we bought were the new great grizley quad kit. damn! that was cool. we also got some free great grizley kits but they werent half as cool as the quad. every year we have a block party at my grandmas house in edmonds, washington and every one brings their own fireworks so we didnt buy any cakes this year so we left it up to the nieghbors who got very good ones. well thats what we did on our 4th of july, hope yours went well also. 

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Well, as usual I went out the day after the 4th and purchased the majority of my fireworks from the local stands.  Everything is at least half price . I ended up with 115 cakes from  Brothers , Firehawk , Blackcat , Great Grizzly and Phantom.  Those are my favorite brands that pack a wallop.  I also had an assortment of mortars- 2 36 shotÊPrimetime, 2 Excaliber, 1 Ninja, American Chief, and Next Generation.  2 years ago I made 2Ê-15 count mortar racks that have worked well in the past but have gotten too small for my displays, not to mention the 2 people loading the mortars accidentally loadedÊone upside down and blew my rack apart, litterally.  So next year I'm making a new rack that will hold 96 mortars so I can personally load them myself.  I have designed a plywood box/rack that holds my cakes.  They are 2x8 and stack in such a way that I can put oneÊboxÊoverÊthe underlying box of cakes.  Each level holdsÊ24 medium sized cakes.  As each layer is finished, I remove that layer and am ready to light the next layer.  I had 5 layers.  I'd list all the cakes but there are too many to list but my favorites are Rainfire, Silver Sonic Warhead, Fire Astral,  Tidal Surge, America Invincible,ÊMagic Carpet, Pyro Pandemonium, Super Stallion,ÊAce Combat and the new 500 gram cake by Blackcat- Megatron3.ÊAll my cakes were glued into my boxes for safety.  Safety is my #1 issue with fireworks display.  We all wore safety glasses and used a pushbutton propane torch ( it saves on burnt fingers).  ÊMy friends and family arrived for the festivities.  I had a friend videotapeÊthe show and was impressed how it turned out.  Usually I am on the front line and do not get to see the show so this was a nice addititon that I will incorporate every year.  I started the show at dusk by lighting off a 2000 count roll of firecrackers and by lighting my black powder cannon (Big Bad Mama) which is the best day-time firework there is.  M-1000 loud and very safe as it shoots no projectiles- just butt-wipe!  We handed out flyers to the neighbors and was really surprised by the turn-out.  We had food, drinks, and good company.  Somehow though, the show is not complete without an irrate neighbor or the police showing up.  This year it was only 6 police cars and the fire battalion.  Even though everything I do is leagal, I always manage to piss someone off.  There is always just one party-pooper, everyone else loved the show and will come back next year.  Those of you who  care, my wife loves the drink "911" which is peppermint and cinnamon schnapps.  LET'S ALL BE SAFE AND RESPONSIBLE TO KEEP FIREWORKS AROUND FOR OUR ENJOYMENT.  Remember fireworks are not just for holidays, they are a way of life!. Without Bobs books and videos buying fireworks would be a guessing game. I tell everyone who is serious about fireworks to purchase them. 

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 Not much to tell this year. I haven't shot our consumer show this year. We always shoot at my Dad's acreage in the country and he has forbidden any fireworks until we get some rain.
       I did do our town's 1.3g show again this year but we had a few problems there. The show content was good but we had trouble with an upper level wind blowing debri onto the rooftops of some houses.  This was really aggravating because the wind on the ground was practically a non-factor. We fired a test shell prior to the show and decided to relocate our mortars about 100 feet further down range. We only shoot a few hundred 3", 4", and 5" shells with the help of a few firemen we were able to slide the racks and electrical equipment to what we thought was a safe distance.  After rechecking our continuity and re-attaching a few E-matches we the got the go ahead from the fire department to start the show.  Everything was going well until the middle of the show.  I had put three angle cakes firing red white and blue breaks and over them I had 5" shells of red white and blue falling leaves.  The stars from these shells burn for a long time as they fall to the ground and the upper level winds being what they were carried them right for the only houses in the area.  The sirens from the firetrucks immediately brought a halt to the show as they raced to the houses to check for any potential problems.  After a few minutes they indicated that I should re-start the show.  I continued but was a little apprehensive about the upcoming finales.  The first mini-finale went fine, two 50-shot cakes sent spinning crackling gold all over the sky and explode into breaks of green and white and 9 roman candles on angles sent up red white and blue tailed titanium salutes into the sky.  After a short pause I pulled the trigger on the one I never should have fired. It was an all gold willow finale.  It consisted of a 100 shot 2" gold willow peanut shells, four 3"  gold willow candles and 4" and 5" gold willow shells on top of that.  I had dreamed about this part of my finale for a year, that dream did not include what happened next.  As I looked up at the beautiful sight of the gold trails breaking high above me, my heart sank as one by one they flew over my head and directly for the same houses that were hit before.  Almost as soon as I touched of this finale the sirens started sounding and then resounding I just threw my hands up in the air as the cake and candles continued to fire.  The fallout was much worse this time.  There were bits and pieces of charred paper some still glowing all over the roofs of houses and in the yards and even on the school grounds and buildings across the street, but there was still little or no wind at ground level.  I still had my main finale to go, but I wanted no part of it. After about 30 minutes of wetting down rooftops and more firetrucks I was trying to figure out what to do with the remainder of my show.  Then as I walked back over to the firing area my brother, who had been spotting and working the radio for me that night, told me that it was a go to shoot the rest of the show.  I was in disbelief and at first I refused, but then he said the fire chief almost insisted.  I had no willows or similar shells in the last finale so I put on my gear and we let it go. The final 5 cakes lasted about 30 to 40 seconds and then it was over and I couldn't have been more relieved.  I apologized repeatedly to the firemen about the whole event an they were totally cool about the whole thing.  I later found out allot of them were on various rooftops and they thought they had the best view of anyone for my last finale, as one put it "all that was missing was a cool beverage".  I still felt very bad about the whole thing and the next day called all the residents that were involved.  They couldn't have been more gracious and most responded with "Hey, you can't help the weather" and a few were afraid that we wouldn't have a show next year. Of course I knew that I was responsible and had to take into account the wind and other factors as operator of the show.  I'm just thankful nothing to bad came of it.
     On top of all this I had to go in for back surgery in a couple weeks for some ruptured disks. I did manage a trip to Missouri for some fireworks before my surgery. It was a little early so the selection was not quite what I had hoped for.  I did find a dozen Super Rockets left from last year I snatched those along with a good version of Battle of Colors and a Crackling Bombette(good reports??)
   After my surgery I was in bed mostly for a good week to 10 days but was able to make it up to my brothers 1.3G show(this was a big no-no so don't tell my doctor).  His show is roughly equivalent to mine but he shoots up to 6 inch shells but not quit as many cakes.  He also had to fire his 5 inch shells by hand because he couldn't get enough tubes.  Since I was pretty much an invalid, I decided to tape a bunch of the set up and taped the show. It came out pretty good.  He had much more wind during the day and also had a willow cake something like mine.  He strategically planned his fallout area so all the debris fell where there was nothing to worry about.  His show went great.  He did have one shell that flower potted on him but no damage done.
 
The weekend before July 4th we made another trip for firework and came up with a few new items. Some new canister shells called Cherry Bombs, some new cakes by Fireworks over America called Tennessee Kicker, Hot Stars(angle cake) and another one I can't remember right now, a Brothers cake called Rave Party, and a few Winda cakes, the names of which I don't recall at this time.  Most of these are stored at my brothers place.  At any case, I'll try to get some good video of it all if we ever get to shoot it(PLEASE RAIN!!).  We'll have about 30 cakes and over 100 shells plus various rockets and candles.
 
Didn't do much on the 4th again feared it was to dry the kids did some poppers, smoke balls and some sparklers that's about it.  So basically I've got a basement full of fireworks I can't wait to get into.

That's about it Hope everyone else had a better July 4TH.

Oh I would like to encourage everyone to give a very good description of at least one item (preferably something new ) they shoot off in these stories.  That's what I like to read about every year and it helps to find out what products are good every year. I wish I had more input this year, sorry!
 
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I had a great fireworks show this yearÊI live in Virginia so it is hard to find real fireworks like rockets and Roman candles etc. So I went down to Kentucky and got 300 Dollars worth of fireworks they were great. I think the best were the artillery shells i got 2 boxes of those , I also got some black cat fountains and a fountain called ''hit man'' and one that was called sky scraper. It was not as good as the hit man one. I had some black cat Roman candles called ''handfuls'' those were cool to . I had bought these rockets called jumbo jet rockets . i was hopeing those would work well but those could not be kept under controll so i only used one of those . they were a waste of 11 dollars for 4 rockets. I had some screming dragon rockts which were i think 12 for 3.50 . I really liked those they were hard to keep under controll to be were not as bad as the jumbo jet rockets. That was abot all i had excepts for some other small things like bottle rockets and firecrackers and some whistling dixies. I hope you had a great fourth to I know I did. 

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 Hi Bob, We had a good 4th of Juy down at the beach. Bolivar peninsula near Galveston. Fireworks are getting more popular every year down here. There is public access to miles of beachfront and people can drive on the beach and everyone is trying to outdo each other so all you see for hours are miles of color explosions in the sky. I had a pretty good show this year. I set off about 100 artillery shells and 60 cakes. shells were in racks of twenty five tied to visco for a 3-4 sec pacing. Most cakes duct taped together to prevent tipping and sticky matched together to get more effect. Sticky match is great and you can interspace visco to get the timing right. I also use a small cd box with ematches so I sit back a hundred feet away to fire the show. It was great. loaded everything on a flatbed trailer and brought it down to the beach.the show lasted 20 min but was a little short becausere I had an early finale. One of the artillery shells exploded near the ground and set off about 15 cakes at one time. Short but very cool.The best cakes were Lightning Storm (BC) and Wild Boar sshot in groups. Niagra falls (Super bright white mines) Atom Splitter (pearls that break into four pearls) were also great. Pyroking shells from Victory were the best of the artilery (Even better than Rambo kid) they have great sparling comet tail and a great willow shell that hangs in the air a long time. thanks to Bob for the great info. My video tape came out crappy I could not seem to get both the low level and high stuff. I'l will keep working on that....Be safe so they don't outlaw the stuff because consumer fireworks today are outstanding and with some work you can achieve some very proffesional results.....

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For the past 2 years (2000 and 2001) I have owned a fireworks stand. Last year was a pretty slow year, I barely made a profit. One the 4th of July I went to my great uncles or cousins house (not sure exactly how im related) which I had been doing for the last 3 years. Well the 2 previous years I always brought too many fireworks and ended up haveing people help me shoot off the rest of my stuff. This last year was quite different. After I closed my stand about 9:30 after no more customers came by, I left for their house. I had preped this time, I wired an entire case of #400 shells with quickmatch. I also cut off the end of a case of magic ball romen candles (144 in a case) I opened the end of each package and tore off all the papers to expose the fuses which took about 1/2 hour if not more. I had bought several packs of "High Velocity" rockets. This is in Washington state, I own a state stand and cannot sell rockets or firecrackers, but I can buy as much as I want to. My main supplier in a 20 minute drive in Anacortes. They are actually on the Indian reservation. But I pounded all the rockets with a hammer to loosen the powder in the rockets (whistle mix burns instantly when its not compact in the rockets) When I got to their house I poured some of the powder all over the top of the case of romen candles, the easy, yet dangerous part was to light the thing, I took as long of a punk as possible and extended my arm as far as it could reach. I barely even tapped the punk to the top of the case and jumped back as far as possible because I knew the powder would light instantly. In a small fireball and a few seconds later, I had a 1440 shotCake going off, it was awesome. This year I want to do the same thing with a case of Black Cat Kaleidoscope candles.
Well I still had alot of stock left after the 4th, I mean ALOT. I could have almost restocked a fireworks stand with how much I had, My uncle told me about a huge party that his friends have out on a lake just outside Anacortes, WA off HWY 20 on your way to Whidbey Island. Some parts of the lake are privat, which this was at a campground where alot of my uncles friends and family are for most of the summer. They set up a boat covered in fireworks they get. This year I was able to help, I practically sold All I had to their friends, in about 1/2 hour I raked in $400 from them, I was selling pretty much at the price I paid to give them a deal. Well I had run out of fireworks and would not be able to shoot any off that nite when the party started, so I asked one of my uncles friends who usually spends about 1000 on fireworks a year to give me a ride to the wholesale place only about 5-10 minutes away. We got there and they were closed, this was the saturday after the 4th and I was not sure if they would be open. So we just hit the stands down the hill. A few were still open selling what they had. I bought a few things myself, they were selling just above wholesale and some even at wholesale. One of the stands I have known for a few years to supply me some of the "Big Boomers" which are illegal. I did not get an M-80s, but I did buy some areial Salutes, 2 of them cost me $10 one cost 20, When we got back to the Lake I set off one of the small ones, the lift off was like a whoosh of air, it traveled about 30 feet in the air and BOOM suprised alot of people, I saved the rest of my stuff for the nite. It was time to put the boat in the water, this thing was packed with probably around 500 or even 1000 of fireworks at retail, I even put on one of my small tubes, also on there was the 12-shot #300 shell rack by black cat, I sold it for 75, 10 above wholesale. The boat burnt much faster than everyone wanted. but it wa awesome! Rite after the boat finished I went and got my Larger areial salute. I set it off, it went about 30 feet in the air, this time it had an awesome lift charge. It exploded and it was worth the 20 bux, it scared the SH*T out of alot of people, many were not expecting it, the echo alone lasted about 30 seconds. U can count on me for the loud stuff. This year is different, I will not be open for 2002 because of insurance problems, they decided to discontinue writing policies for fireworks stands, and the cheapest policy I could find after that was 600, 3 times what I had paid for before. But im still gonna be able to buy at wholesale. A few days before the 4th, I am going to go to the lake and talk to everyone there and get money and a list of what people want, Im only charging 25% above wholesale. On the 3rd of July my uncle is planning on having a party. and the 4th Im going to the lake. If all works out well, I will probably make pick up an order of at least 1,500 in fireworks, about 3,000-4000 at retail level. 
I hope everyone has a Happy 4th and I know I will. 

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Thanks again to everyone who contributed a story this year. Please contribute again in July 2003.

Keep visiting Fireworksland.com for my newest products and latest additions to my web site!

Happy shooting,
Bob Weaver

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