"How I Spent My 4th of July" (2005 edition) 

Written by fireworks lovers around the U.S.A. 
Compiled by Bob Weaver
http://fireworksland. com

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This file is provided to you for your own reading only. Please do not publish or distribute this text, including sending it by e-mail or uploading it to any web site. The copyright to each story belongs to the person who wrote that story. Thank you for your cooperation. 
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The order of the stories is completely random.
 
Some of these stories may contain language which is not suitable for children. Please do not let children read this collection of stories. 

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! Nothing in any of these stories should be necessarily considered an endorsement of any product, service, person, business or organization. 

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. 

Readers of this material are 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.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this. If you are one of the 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

Now, on to the stories.......

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This was my first-ever pyro show. I decided to go relatively high-tech, and built a 20-cue firing panel, powered by a lawnmower battery. The fireworks were the result of a 2-for-1 deal at a Phantom Outlet, featuring some 35 repeaters and a number of homemade contraptions (bottle rockets fused together and the like).
 
Initial tests on the panel were very satisfactory-- every switch worked, as long as the target fuse was properly wired with nichrome. I had a soundtrack, and a cue list prepared to more or less synchronize the display with the music.
 
Setup took about 90 minutes, and included a launch site pre-soak with our emergency sprinkler system, which was to be activated if things somehow got out of hand. Safety first: everything was propped in place with bricks and cinder blocks, and two guests were armed with fire extinguishers.
 
Problem 1:Êseveral minutes after arming the firing panel, but before the show began, the wire leading to the battery began smoking and burst into flame.ÊThe quick (and, it turns out,Êincorrect) diagnosis was that the thin wire leading to the battery couldn't take the juice going through it. We clipped the panel's heavy-duty extension cord power supply wires directly to the battery terminals, and prepared for the show.
 
 
Problem 2: the music was to start on the detonation of our first effect, a single mortar, manually set off by a friend. Of course, our neighbors chose a moment roughly 5 seconds before we were ready to set off a mortar of their own, which my music cue person took to be the "go" signal. The music thus started before anybody was really ready... but it worked out surprisingly well, becuase our mortar launched at almost exactly the same time as the music began.
 
The next thirty seconds went swimmingly-- the crowd was surprised at the scope of our show and cheered loudly. Then, thirty seconds into a nine minute show:
 
Problem 3: the cell phone I was using as a stopwatch suddenly shut itself off. I had no timer, and thus was forced to try to run through my cues from memory. It was fine, except that I was going through my arsenal far too quickly, and that the Saturn batteries were launched well before their scheduled "rockets' red glare" time slot. I was SO proud of myself, when, six minutes in:
 
Problem 4: see Problem 1, above. Smoking wires, dead panel, end of show. Well, my friend and I set off a number of mortars of the next twenty minutes or so, and I lit the final few cues manually, but the Grand Finale'Êtimed to coincide withÊ"home of the brave" never materialized.
 
The next morning I checked my panel, and found that an alligator clip used to hold a terminal in place was also touching the common ground wire. This created a short circuit which led to my "meltdown".
 
Despite the problems, this was a positive and learning experience. The crowd didn't mind the hiccups, and loved the display. My friend with the mortars said he's on board for next year's show, and will have a firing panel of his own. Nobody was hurt, except for a girl who stepped on a hot sparkler (some helpful soul had brought her own fireworks, and promptly began handing these flesh-eating devices to everybody in the 5-10 demographic).
 
Next year: more and better!

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This was my 1st 4th of July since my wife died very unexpectedly at the end of April, she was a major fireworks fan so I felt compelled to have the biggest and best show ever. I started w/a 6 hour drive to Las Cruces NM, to my favorite Phantom Fireworks store, at their great 2 for 1 deal my brother & I stocked up on about $1200 worth of mainly cakes and shells(Grucci's rule!) Also picked up about 30 boxes of the most fun you can have for $1.25/box Hydro-crackers, anyone out there who hasn't tried these should. I had a bunch of 50+ yr old guys laughing like junior-high kids as we dropped these water-proof crackers into the irrigation ditch and splashed water & mud all over each other. 

We then built a 12ft "A"(my wife's initial) out of 2x4's to which we attached: 12 large color changing pinwheels,4 happy lamps, 2/400 strips of Wolf pack crackers, 2 Red/Wht&Boom cakes, in front we had 2 Grucci NY Harbor Fountains and 2/250 wishteling,crackeling missile bases. All this was fused together and topped off by my wife favorite "Midnight Monsoon" cake. This was to be the over 4 minute finale of our show that included over 100(1-4 break) shells which we were able to put up to 5 at a time in the air thanks to my new "pyro-gear" HDE plastic firing tubes(which were excellent and much safer to use then the cardboard ones that come with). About 20 cakes(Blue Ring Willow,Pyro-Pandimonium,Mojo,Barbarian Blast,Mineshell Mayhem,etc),10 fountains(NY Harbor,Keg,Komondo,Apache Dancer,Power Surge,etc.) and sparklers for the kids.

My show is usually about 15/20 minutes this year's was over 45 and we had something going the whole time! Our audience has grown from our family to over 75 folks from the surrounding area. We are unfortunately in a state where fireworks are considered "unsafe and insane" so we take tons of precautions, wet the whole area down and try to be as careful as possible(no bottle-rockets allowed). Our audience anticipates the show for weeks and we never disappoint them, this years show was by far our biggest and best effort to date.

My show was on the 3rd so we could go watch the highlight of the holiday which was when I arranged w/AZ Firework Productions(special thanks to Kendon, the owner) for a portion of my wife's ashes to be attached to a 8inch shell that was fired as the final shell in our local town's fabulous 4th of July show!! We had always said that would be the ultimate way to celebrate our passing and that I was able to make it happen was a very emotional but wonderful thing.

Thanks for letting me share this, it was my best (and worst) 4th of July ever.

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My July 4th story.
It actually starts Sunday with food and drinks during daylight hours. Sunday night was test firing for the mortars and 500 grammers because I had a couple of new things from Forward fireworks. Finished wiring Monday morning and of course at 10:00pm the show begins. Started out with 13-15 Winda 200 grammers with a mix of Blackcat. My second board contained 8 500 grammers and my finally contained 10 500 grammers. 30 minutes of pyrotechnics. Bob I tried to take pictures of my pryotechnics for the first time.

Forward: 	Big Bock = OK
		Sky Bomber = Good Performer
		Romantic Story = OK
		Tears in Heaven = Not Good

Asia Pyro: Gold Gold Gold = Good Performer

Black Cat/Zenith: Base Jump = OK
			HPP-4 = OK
			Sunflower = Good Performer/same effect/nice break

Brothers: 	Fire Fly = Good Performer
		Red, White and Blue Salute = Ok < I had one better last year and it was under the name USA Salute

Looking forward to New Years.

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Hey bob I just put on a small show at my shooting spot in Hayward.....
 9 500g cakes, some super rockets, 4 300 shot missile batteries, smiling ear to ear rockets, and one 2" salute. about 30 min worth it was cool.
 
On the 3rd my son and I went to beer can beach to light some stuff and to see R's showÊgreat beach, great people, great fireworks.

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This 4th of July was the best yet ( shopping for fireworks atleast ). But, I went to the phantom in Ohio to get my fireworks. I spent about $350 this year and it was the best money I've ever spent. I mostly bought cakes this year. I got two 500 grams and these things were nice. I got the Pyrotechnic Motherload and the Operation Enduring Freedom. I also found that the machine gun shell repeater is simply amazing. I'd recommend it to any firework lover. But, my 4th of July plans got rained on. Non-stop rain until my show was over of course. But that did not stop us. Even though alot of the wicks kept getting put out. This year was alot of fun even with the rain. Next year will just be bigger and better. 

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We had an OK 4th. Had over $1,300 in fireworks from Phantom Fireworks. Two $150.00 cakes failed to light along with over 3 cases of shells having to be refused as the fuses came out. Other items failed to ignite and every roll of firecrackers we had, had to be relit atleast 5-6 times.
 
We are pretty mad about all that and hope Phantom will reimburse us for all the problems. We've spent a lot of $$$ with them over the years and never had anything like this happen. 
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what a 4th it was. We had about 500 people show up. the police were around the neighborhood all day eating lunch and dinner with us. about 6 at night we had about 50 police on each end of the block on quads, bicycles, motorcycles, and regular police cars all gathered together and they stayed there until about 8:30pmwhen we started our firework show which they told us we only had a half hour to do( fireworks are illegal in our city and they are really cracking down) anyhow a couple of us built 4 4x8 sheets of plywood and we fused about 14 -18 500 gram heavyweights by brothers , pyro king, and world class fireworks on each sheet of plywood ( we glued each piece down and ran fuse to each cake using zip ties to tie them together and then we used sticky match finale which travels 60' per second so at the end they all go at once. we fused all 4 boards together. we had 67 heavyweights all go off at once it was unbelieavable. The police shut our party down after about 30 minutes. they called for 75 more police to come in along with the commissioner of the police dept. they walked down the street in riot gear and stationed 2-4 cops at every house all the way down the street and they shut us down. I asked one cop why they shut us down when eveybody else around our neighborhood was lighting all of their stuff off and he told me that our neighborhood is known for one of the biggest firework shows in our area and that it is spectacular but at the same time it is illegal and that is why they shut it down. He then asked who built the finale on the plywood and where he could get one for next year. We didn't tell him that part. I still have numereous fireworks left over that we never got to light off. We did the finale first because we only had a short time to do our show. We all look forward to july 4 it is my favorite day of the year and it seems like every year the fireworks that they come out with get better and better. Hope everyones 4th was as good as mine.

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This 4th was the best 4th that I have done yet! I go to phantom fireworks in PA. every year but this year me and my dad boughtÊa huge amount of fireworks! We got 2 Mass detonations
2 Hight proformance displays
2 New Yorker salute finales
2 Aerial avalanches
2 New York harbor mortor shows
2 moltov cocktails
2 colortopias
20 Grucci mortor tubes
2 Pyro Glyphics
4 silver sonic warheads
2 Bada bing bada boom
2 #500 fluoresent Oranga
2 #500 fluorescent purple bombsells
2 blue ringed willow
2 machine gun shells
2 phantomizer collections
2 vertical velocity
2 crack the sky
2 pyrotechnic pulverizers
 
I set up boards all day with fuses atached so i only had to light 1 fuse. This show lasted about 25 min. and the cops came 10 min. into the show and my dad was like we cant stop it. So after the show was over we heard a rumble of claps throughout the naborhood and even the cop was clapping! So after all that the cop said no more fireworks 2night. For the finale i shot off 40 2'' mortors and 8 500g cakes in aboutÊ2 1/2 min,Êit was awsome!ÊWe have the best display of fireworks in our naborhood every year! This 4th was the best 4th that I have done yet! I go to phantom fireworks in PA. every year but this year me and my dad boughtÊa huge amount of fireworks! We got 2 Mass detonations
2 Hight proformance displays
2 New Yorker salute finales
2 Aerial avalanches
2 New York harbor mortor shows
2 moltov cocktails
2 colortopias
20 Grucci mortor tubes
2 Pyro Glyphics
4 silver sonic warheads
2 Bada bing bada boom
2 #500 fluoresent Oranga
2 #500 fluorescent purple bombsells
2 blue ringed willow
2 machine gun shells
2 phantomizer collections
2 vertical velocity
2 crack the sky
2 pyrotechnic pulverizers
 
I set up boards all day with fuses atached so i only had to light 1 fuse. This show lasted about 25 min. and the cops came 10 min. into the show and my dad was like we cant stop it. So after the show was over we heard a rumble of claps throughout the naborhood and even the cop was clapping! So after all that the cop said no more fireworks 2night. For the finale i shot off 40 2'' mortors and 8 500g cakes in aboutÊ2 1/2 min,Êit was awsome!ÊWe have the best display of fireworks in our naborhood every year!

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We had a barbeque at my house with 40 friends & relatives. while everyone was in the back yard i was out front settig up my show. my neighbors & i have had a friendly compition giong on for the past ten years that i have won hands down every year. my neighbor is moving before next 4th of july so they were determined to win this year. they finaly listened to me and went to Phantom fireworks and bought a ton of products. so now that theyhad the same items i had i had toget creative. i used several different cakes and morter kits fused toghter. i also built a finaly board 2'x8' with 26 tubes 2fan fountains 1 200 shot & 1 160 shot rapid fire boxes. i wierd each piece with an electric match & built a nail board to fire the items it worked perfectly it was a hell of a finaly the didnt quite concede but we did have a great time.Ê

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well it all started with people wanting to buy fireworks from me so i was selling all kinds of fireworks to people that i purchased from phantom.then after almost the end of the day i was getting my stuff ready for the night and was also on my way to my roof top to see the macy's firework display.there was a couple of people lighting stuff before and i was looking at that.and of course i had my camcorder and was filming it. then the macy's fireworks started so i quickly started recording them and it was very nice,they came out with awesome new effects and it was just nice.then after that i went to a park with a large field and started lighting my stuff.but the only thing i had to worry about was the cops because it is very illegal to use fireworks and of course i am in nyc so i can get busted easly so i had some people keep a look out for me while i was recording and my friends were lighting the stuff. they could not set the stuff up like for a show because of the cops they had to do like 2 things at the same time and run back and yes cops passed by but they did not stop and at that time we were not lighting anything.but yeah i had some nice cakes and i created a really nice mortar rack using phantom artillery shells and some festival balls. and i purchased that ignitor kit from phantom but that thing is not 100% good quality because sometimes something can go wrong especially rapid fire. but other than that i was amazed out of my mind because some people down the street were using 1.3G fireworks. like those salute shells that explode very loud, i was shocked because it was on my block and was wondering how that person got their hands on those.but yeah there was people watching what i got and seemed to really like it. they sure can't wait for next year as well as me im getting more than this year.and all i have to say is that my 4th was safe and greatful.

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Here is my story. Nothing too interesting, but it's my story. 

My Dang Stinking Fireworks Show:

Every Year for the past 3 years, I have fired a consumer fireworks show at my sister's house in a small town in northern Illinois, near the Wisconsin border. I get most of my products just over the border at a Phantom Fireworks store. I started buying the first weekend they opened for the season, and went there so much that the manager, and several employees know me by first name. 

I also picked up some items in Indiana, and used my BATFE License to get some 1.3g items this year. The show is in a residential area, so I only wanted some small 1.3g stuff. I picked up some 25s Thunder Kings, A 25s 1" Ti Salute cake, a dozen 1 3/4" salute shells, and a bunch of baby "B" cakes. 

Basically all fireworks are illegal in Illinois, but the cops in this town are very cool about fireworks. Last year, around 11:00 pm, the cops started coming around and telling us that if we got a block party permit, and blocked off the street, that we could light what ever we wanted to, and they would not bother us. That is what we did. While I was buying fireworks over the past 2 months, my sister was setting up the block party. 

My goal was to have a great show, and a good video of it so that I could get it onto one of Bob Weaver's DVDs. 

Just days before the 4th, a cop called my sister's house and said that a neighbor called them concerned that illegal fireworks may be used at her house during the block party on the 4th. He brought over some literature on what was legal and what was not. Well nothing I was firing in my show was legal... Absolutely nothing. Being that I have a federal license, I know that to legally shoot a show, I would need a permit. Looking into that, I know that the city would want me to pay insane $$ and jump through crazy hoops, plus have a fire engine onsite to do all that, so that was out of the question. 

Although I have a great deal of respect for fireworks and the potential dangers that are involved in their use, I have a complete lack of respect, and total disregard for the anti American, anti fireworks laws that plague so much of our country. So, I knew I was going to shoot the show, but I was nervous about problems arising with authorities before the shoot. 

The plan was to set the show up on boards in the garage, then bringing it out just before shooting, incase cops or fire officials drove by, it would look innocent. The problem was that I was shooting with a Z11 Pyro Supply electric firing board, and a Phantom E-fuse system. So that meant that I still had quite a bit to set up after I got the boards out. Well I brought the boards out about 8:30 (much too late). It was not until I was finishing up that I realized that my shooting wire spool did not contain the amount of wire it was supposed to, and I had less quick match than I thought I had. Some neighbors got some speaker cable, which helped, but wasn't enough. I started quickly loosing daylight, and began to panic, and rush. I knew that if I had to rush, then I had to make sure that safety was still my no. 1 priority, and the number of effects, and sequence of the show was secondary... I had 4 buckets of water, a garden hose, and 2 fire extinguishers with me, and in reach of the audience. 

I didn't want to start before it was totally dark because I did the last 2 years, and the video wasn't that great because of it, but the Show in Beloit Wisconsin (which we could see in the distance) started before it was dark, for some reason, and I figured I should do mine asap. 

I had the audience do the count down, and I started. The show started great! One problem I had last year was that I had several devices close to each other, and one device set off another device's quick match, firing that cue prematurely. I planned to prevent that this year with aluminum foil covering quick match. Well, I didn't have time for that, and it happened again. The bulk of my finale fired early... In my panic, I goofed up on firing cues on the wrong place because I had my Phantom remote controller mixed in with my hard wired cues, and just as I thought may happen, I skipped a few of the cues. I had a lull in the show that started late. I had a 500 gram fountain that was running, and some mortar racks near it. I decided to run up to the racks at that time to see if one of them was fired by the quick match problem, and also re-enforce it with water buckets, as I was walking away, I tripped on a Ematch wire that was plugged into the remote receiver. That spun it around, but I didn't notice it. I tried to fire the next cue on that which was a roman candle barrage, with about 30 candles. It was already late, but it took me a while to realize it would not fire because the receiver got reversed and could not see the beam. I went back up and fixed it, then fired it. That caused that cue to pretty much go last. Other than the triple angle rack loaded with 3 1 3/4" salute shells which I fired at the very end. The most important thing is that no injuries of damage occurred, but unfortunately, what was supposed to be my best show yet, got all screwed up! It was the first one that did not get a decent applause after it. I had to do such a quick, bad job of hooking everything up, MANY cakes did not even fire. (most of those couldn't fire, because I never got to gook them up. The stuff that did fire was beautiful, but overall, I was disappointed. 

I hand fired a bunch of unfired cakes and items after the show. We called it quits around 10:30 ish, and I never saw a single cop the entire night. All the paranoia ended up being for nothing. 

I still have a bunch left over for next year, so I may as well start planning it now, and figuring out what I need to do to make certain these problems don't occur again.

If this show were ever seen on a Bob Weaver DVD, it would probably be on a 'How not to shoot a show' segment, since everything was so... Off... Despite all my planning, it looked like a totally unplanned show where things were randomly fired in any order. 

Oh well, there is always next year... Hopefully! 

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I live in Illinois and three years ago I bought some fireworks and went over to my sisters house to light them off. I had spent about $350.00 retail. I had a small finale that lasted a little over a minute which everyone loved. I had 8 cakes that i had fused individually counting down to the one with the least duration. It worked out great. My sisters house backs into a lake so it was a perfect spot. There were people across the lake that were clapping and really enjoyed the show. Anyway this how i got my brother in law hooked on fireworks. After the show he immediately came up to me and said we are going to do this again next year and next year we are going to get more. I said ok. Last year went great. I found a wholesaler and got a bargain on fireworks. Spent about $700.00 wholesale the second year. The finale lasted about 3 minutes. So this year he told me we had to out do last years finale. So this years finale was going to last about 4 and a half minutes. The wind was blowing in so we started lighting stuff off at about 9:30 pm when the wind dioed down a little. We had dragon eggs triple power shells which by the way are pretty goods shells for triple breaks. We were lighting those off one at a time then two then just by the start of the finale we lit off 10 shells at a time twice. What a spectacular display, i was very impressed. Any way after shooting those off we got the finalle ready. It consisted of 6 2' x 4' boards fused together for a 4 and a half minute show. We lit that puppy up and off it went. I was looking at the show the whole time unitl the last break. After the finaleÊpeople all accross the lake was clapping screaming and yelling great show. When i finally looked down i saw a bunch of people with flashlights. Cops!! But they were actually pretty cool about the whole thing. Surprising!! The town that my sister lives in was building a police station across from their subdivision. We did not know it was already open. Anyway it turns out that a few of the people at the party knew some of the cops and the cops actually told us that they were watching the fireworks from the police station and were enjoying it unitl the finale came out and that's when their sargeant said go over there and check it out. They got there about halfway through the finale and had actually got a hose from someone and try to put out the display. It did not work and he threw the hose down and decided to watch the end of the show. They asked if someone had a batf license and i told them that these are consumer fireworks. They did not believe me and they had to call the bomb squad to determine wether or not we had display fireworks. I guess they could not transport display fireworks in their cars. Anyway the bomb squad came over looked at the fireworks and said its ok. The cops left and told us to enjoy the rest of the party and told us that they actually enjoyed the fireworks. They were there just to make sure everyone is ok and they were following orders from their sargeant. As a matter of fact a half hour after all the cops had left another squad car pulled up to the house and told us that he was by the police station when he saw the display and was enjoying it when he got a call to go somewhere else. He came back just to tell us that he enjoyed the show. Anyway not sure if we are going to this again next year. If we do we are going to scale it down a little. The cops said they monitor the fireworks and had told us ours was the biggest display they have ever seen for someones backyard. Anyway, no one went to jail and we enjoyed the rest of the evening. Maybe i'll send you a video of the finale.

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The story thing is great!

I will try and be brief but you are dealing with a true HARD CORE PYRO at heart.

First exposed to fireworks at age three at my uncles corner grocery store in Oklahoma. 

From there it has been a life long event. Patric Mc Manus said it best. It is not just a day but a season. The months leading up to the fourth and ending around October. 

This is the best fireworks story I have ever read. A must read for any pyro at heart.

So I annually make about a twenty four hour drive to buy the GOOD stuff. 

What is the good stuff. ALL of it. But our trip starts with two of us. Sometimes we drive all night and sleep on the beach in our vehicle. Get up with only one or two hrs sleep. Go eat at the same place it's a 100+ yr old B&B. 

Then we go shopping! Yahoo!

We spend money at about four or five different places. They smile when they see us coming. They know it's spend money time. One of our vendors always brings out new stuff and lights it in from of their store. So we can see what it looks like. At the end of our shopping spree they always start grabbing things off the shelf and just throwing it in our BIG boxes. They make so much money on fireworks. It's just their way of saying thanks. Well we just spent about two thousand dollars overall! Not just your average firework purchase. 

We shop the stores for the best buys, more like a kid in a candy store. And off we go. Making our last stop and spending every bit of spare change we have buying what ever else we think we might have forgot.

It's funny some places you can buy mortars but no firecrackers of bottle rockets. So we spread it all out.

The 750 shot Saturn Missile Battery is a real crowd pleaser. We bought a cake called "Illegal As Hell". And it was too. One Bad Mother-Inlaw was awesome also.

Many cakes, rockets, mortars, rolls of firecrackers, and bottle rockets make up our day. Daytime parachutes for the kids and much more. We literally light up the beach. If it were not for the economy of the local businesses's they would not let us get away with what we do on the 4th of July. It is our towns biggest revenue day of the year. 

I also HAD access to some of the bigger stuff. Three, four and five inch mortars. Yes I bought the HDPE pipe and all. Is that a sign of a hard core pyro? I even set it off electronically with a homemade box. I had two banks of four leads. I felt like a semi pro as the crowd watched me hook it all up. 

The grand finally is awesome to say the least. The three inch Titanium Silver Tail Salute ROCKS THE TOWN!!! And the thump of the five inch mortars taking off at twenty feet away is ground shaking.

This has been a life long dream and also to celebrate our independence and freedom something I cherish. 

I started wondering what freedom would I have if one of those Five inch mortars went off prematurely?

Or if one of those three inch Salutes went off any where near me or someone else. Instant death I would pray for. Not just some mangled person for the rest of their life.

It was my best fourth of July, and my most sad. 

I realized what I had started had to have an end. Before a tragedy struck. 

I ended my career as an Illegal Pyro this year. 

I am no longer going on our ritual firework trip. 

It was the Best and the Last. 

Many people get hurt and retired in my line of work. I have decided if it happens to me I am going to be retrained as a Professional Pyrotechnician. Yah baby!

I only hope they don't poke my eye's out! that would be a bummer. 

So yah, my 4th of July was a BLAST. 

I thank God no one got hurt.

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120 of our family and friends gathered in a meadow near Saratoga NY where we did a 2 hour show consisting of (120) 500mg cakes and (15) "Bs"---with a bonfire and glow necklaces for all the kids and some of "the adults?". It was blast and the local sheriffs watched from the road, which was very considerate seeing NY is a "no-no" state. (We kept the spectators in a separate field away from the launch site, with rows of high grass forming a safety barrier.) Fireworks continue to make our 4th, as the 500mg get better and better each year. We did not have 1 misfire in all those pieces, after transporting to NY in a truck, as the quality and performance of fireworks gets better and better each year.

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This was probably my best Fourth of July ever.

I arrived at my dads house (he has a piece of property on a 100 acre lake) early Monday morning to get things set up. I had already fused my 200g board and my tubes board, but I still had to fuse 16 500g cakes as well as place my 20 shot mortar racks and load and fuse them as well.

It was hot...the kind of hot where you would sweat standing in the shade. The weather man said that the temperature would be about 95, but the "feels like" temperature would be 101. And, boy, did it feel like 101. Add 100% humidity, and you've got one hot Fourth. It didn't rain at all, but I was kind of hoping it would - at least a little bit - to cool things down. I had plastic sheets on stand-by just in case.

The first thing I did was lay out the custom angled boards I made, for the cakes and what not, on the dock. There were six total.

The first one had about 20 200g cakes on it including everything that I got from my free Phantom assortment to the bigger cakes including Brothers Bling-Bling and the infamous Wild Wild West. This is one of the boards that I had pre-fused last week.

The second, third, fourth, and fifth boards included all of the 500g cakes which consisted of Shotgun Wedding, Crazy Exciting on Steroids, One Bad Mother, One Bad Mother-In-Law, Blond Joke, and The Big Package. I exhausted a roll of duct tape just securing those bad boys down.

The final angled board had 18 Phantom tubes, mostly the new ones, including the Fluorescent Yellow, Purple, and Orange tubes, the Red Ring Bowtie, and a few Round Red Dahlias as well as 18 Flashing Thunder candles placed in unused mortar tubes. I had pre-fused this board last week as wellÉusing fast (yellow) visco because I wanted this to be my Òfake finaleÓ.

Then came setting up the finaleÉwhich probably took the most time. I had to set up ten 20-shot racks, that I had purchased from PyroGear.net, load them, and fuse them. I set the racks on the beach and secured them with rebar that I slid through the eyehooks that I installed into the racks last week. Then I started loading them up with 200 shells including more than 100 Excalibur shells, 40 New York Harbor shells, and 36 quad-break Grizzly shells (Sometimes I wish the manufacturers would make the fuses easier to unravel. Props to World Class for making the Excaliburs easy to work with, though). After getting all of the fuses unraveled and the shells loaded I moved on to fusing them. I figured for the first 140 shells I would use green (slow) visco to fuse them, then the last 60 would be done with yellow visco. Once I fused all of the shells, I covered the tops of all of the racks with aluminum foil to avoid any stray sparks from setting of a premature finale. I also set up a rocket rack that I built a few weeks ago with 50 Thunder Sticks to be part of the finale as well.

When I finally finished everything, I checked the time. It was 7:00 PM. So I had worked on all of this for about 10 hours. Boy, was I tired.

My brother-in-law was kind enough to bring me a plate of food from the picnic they were having at the beach across the lake, so I took time to enjoy that and relax. It didnÕt take me long to eat it as I was quite hungry.

Around 8:00 PM, other people around the lake started shooting off small things, like Saturn Missile Batteries, bottle rockets, and the usual 4th of July stuff. We answered back with some bottle rockets of our own, anticipating the arrival of nightfall.

A crowd began gathering behind the ÒCautionÓ tape I had put up to keep people away from the fireworks. There was about 40-50 people there.

At about 8:50 PM, the sun finally started setting beyond the horizon. I turned on the Phantom F5 Pyro Ignitor Kit that I had set up on the dock to e-fire the boards I had put out there. Then we waited a few minutes.

8:55 rolled around, and I decided to start the show. Before I started the show, though, I took a moment to make a dedication. I dedicated my show to the Armed Forces, for if it werenÕt for them, we wouldnÕt have been celebrating our independence that day. I also dedicated the show to my mother who has been battling cancer for the past year. And, obviously, if it werenÕt for her, I wouldnÕt be here today celebrating my independence.

Then I hit the button.

The 200g board started off shooting the smaller items then moving on to the bigger 200g cakes. This lasted about 15 minutes.

Then came the four rows of 500 gram cakes, 16 cakes total, all high-powered items. The best of the bunch, in my opinion, was The Big Package. That thing had willows that went on forever and were only stopped because they hit the water on the lake. The Crazy Exciting on Steroids was a bit of a surprise to me as I wasnÕt aware that it had mines when it came out of the cakeÉand what BRIGHT mines they were. It was like daylight every few seconds. All of these cakes lasted about 20 minutes.

Following the 500g cakes was my Òfake finaleÓ. This one went off pretty quick and only lasted about two minutes. I heard a round of applause come from the crowd.

So, I waited a minute or so to let the applause die down and headed over to the first 20-shot mortar rack to light it. When I lit it, I found out rather quickly that, whether or not you have green visco, yellow visco, or even sticky match, when you have 20 fuses tied to one leader fuse, they all tend to go off pretty fast. So, about 10 seconds after I lit it, 20 shots fired off almost synchronously. Then I shot off the next 20 rounds, and the next, until I got to the final sixty shots.

I then yelled ÒHAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY, EVERYONE!!!!Ó and lit the final fuse. 60 shots, including 36 quad-breaks, totaling 174 breaks went off. This lasted about 20 seconds.

It was all over. Ten hours of work for about 45 minutes of show. But it was worth it. I got a standing ovation from the crowd of about 75 people (it had grown since other people in the neighborhood were coming over to see it). People were shaking my hand, giving me hugs, and even offering me money to help with the cost of the fireworks (I refused the money). A lot of people were even telling me that my show was better than the malls show. One gentleman asked me if I was going to be doing another show in the future. I mentioned that I would be doing one on New Years, but probably not something as big as my 4th of July show (yeah, rightÉknowing me it will probably be bigger).

All in all, it was my best Fourth ever. I had very few problems (one cake blew out the side, and the Phantom F5 kit didnÕt fire one of the cues), but other than that, everything went very well.

My dad asked me if I would do it all over again tomorrow. I answered by saying ÒWell, maybe not tomorrow, but definitely the next dayÉI need at least a day to rest!Ó

Yep, it was defenitely my best 4th ever.

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This year i experinced something new leading up to the fourth of july. I recently got a new job working a pool at the top of a 21 story hotel. On the 2nd and 3rd of july you could just pick a point in the horizon and view hundreds of different fireworks going off. It was unlike anything i could ever imagine. I took the 4th of july off because any true pyro can't work that day and i had about 400 bucks worth of top shelf fireworks, im talking about the ones that don't even have warnings or english labels on them.
 
2 -120 shot salute/ with silver tail
3- 60 shot red butterfly
1 - box noisy shells
just to name a few of the good ones.
 
 I assigned the job of video taping them to one of my buddies who i thought could handle the job, Wrong. Through the whole show he was laying down right next to them going off and getting really good angles, but we forgot one thing; we didn't take the lense cap off. I now have about 20 mins of fireworks sounds. Other than this small hickup the crowd loved it. People were pulled up in front of the house watching me shoot them over the lake in the backyard. I feel like the best feeling and the main reason why i shoot fireworks is for the scream and chears of the crowd when the shows over. can't wait to try it again next year. This concludes my fourth of july story

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i just wanted to see how your 4th went... mine went pretty good i was the lead technician of a show on the 2nd and 3rd then i did my own thing on the 4th. i had a lot of 6 and 8 inch shells we fired from my friends house in a residential area. eventually the cops came and they though it was funny. the nearby airport got a report from the FAA about the fireworks on there radar and disturbing plane travel. the cops just told us to fire one shell and take breaks... eventually we started up again when it was like 10:45pm and plane flight was rare... this time they sent a police helicopter over to the house... we lucked out cause we were taking a break. i shot like 6 6 inch shells and they showed up like 10 mins later while i was on break in a helicopter. they were scanning the yard with a search light looking for our tubes which we had hidden under a truck. we just got lucky so many people around here got busted this year with shells and all. next year ill apply for permits and try for a profit free town show. i must say the 8's in a residential looked insane though. 
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I spent the daytime hours of my Fourth like any other day off; I worked around the house. Only difference being I could hear crackers going off all around me making me extremely jealous.

It rained more or less all day in Chicago, good thing as we have not had rain for a month and any unattended grass was long dead (dry grass=fire).

At night the rain tapered down to a light but constant mist, tolerable enough to walk a block to the local park and watch the hundreds of people there shooting off their fireworks.

Fireworks are illegal in Illinois but you would never know it in Chicago. The police have a pretty high tolerance for them, around 11:30 or so they start hassling people still doing them. At the aforementioned park, the crowd shooting off the biggest and baddest fireworks were a group of off-duty Chicago cops. Go figure.

I saw a lot of very nice shells and cakes, including a lot of professional items being used by non-professionals. I was able to walk around the entire park (about 8 square blocks) and watch fireworks for about 2 hours, until the cops kicked everyone out before midnight.

What struck me most is how stupid some people can be with fireworks. I saw people light a 4000 strip of crackers within feet of families sitting on lawn chairs, people shooting rockets horizontally across the park at other groups of revelers, bottle rocket wars, etc.

There seems to be a threshold of boredom that people reach and inevitably start experimenting with different ways of shooting off items. One bottle rocket at a time becomes three at a time, one shell in the mortar becomes two at once or worse, shot off outside the mortar, skyrockets are shot on the ground down the street, etc. I personally did not see anyone get hurt where I was but that was only through the grace of God.

I love fireworks and will until the day I die but as an adult and father of two, I am beginning to see why they are so maligned.

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 I had this idea of a "show in a box" for a small display this year, which of course expanded to two boxes, and then to two boxes plus a 36 shot mortar rack. The premise was that I could spend all the time I needed doing the planning and fusing at home, with exactly two splices needed once I got to the shoot site. I carried this thing around in my trunk for a few days, ready for when I'd be with some friends who wanted to see some fireworks.

This happened on "poker night," when a bunch of us were going to gather at one friend's condo in the city, fourth floor. I set up my boxes across the street from the condo's balcony, in the middle of an asphalt lot. Once everyone arrived, I went out and lit the main fuse, then made my way back to the condo.

The unexpected happened, but it was a good thing: the fuse further down the chain (in the next box) got lit early, so the display was about half as long as I planned. But the beauty of it was the constantly changing variety of effects, layered since my linear sequence of one-at-a-time was now shooting two independent sequences in parallel. The effect was great! (In my mind's eye, it was much, much better than what I'd planned.) We were about 60 feet in elevation above the display boxes, so a lot of the breaks were near eye level. Some of the single tube items shot too high to be seen from the windows though.

A good time was had by all, including numerous spectators from other nearby buildings who hooted their appreciation. I don't think any of my friends had seen a display of consumer fireworks like that, and it was rewarding to see and hear their reaction to my little show. One guy suggested I quit teaching and take up pyrotechnics full time.

Maybe in twenty years, when I retire from teaching. Until then, I have my summers free!

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Let me start by saying that I live close enough to Disneyland to be able to see the fireworks display from my street. It makes a great background. We can only do S & S. Shoot and Scoot that is! We (my son and I) decided to make this the year of the 200-gram cake. We made a Phantom run in September when no one would be at the Showroom and the Local fuzz would not be on alert. Also by using other local firework showroom prices as leverage, we were able to get the prices way below listed prices as well as getting two for ones and freebees too!I picked up the following items: ( I was going for a variety of effects )Effects	Description of Piece	Names of Piece	Quantity		Floral Spray Bursts	Fountain that is followed by six bright floral breaks and report!	GARDEN IN SPRING 6 shot	4		Glitter Rings Chrysanthemums	Gold glitter and green Rings	EMERALD CITY 16 Shot	4		Palm Willow ++	Willow and Palm effects	WILLOW AMONG THE PALMS, 7 shot	4		Chrysanthemums	Red, white and blue Chrysanthemums	RED, WHITE AND BOOM, 16 shot	2		Buzzing Spinners Bursts	Buzzing aerial UFO spinners shoot skyward, then sideways, as reports and color bursts abound	ALIEN ABDUCTION 16 shot 14 secs	2		Willows Pearls Rain Bursts **	Willow bursts with blue Pearl tips	BLUE RINGED WILLOWS 15 shot	4		Whistling Comets Stars Bursts	Shrieking missiles burst loudly into a GIANT floral spectacular	PYRO PANDEMONIUM 25 shot	2		Pearls Peonies Crackling	Green Pearl which produce red and blue Peonies which are followed with silver Crackle	SHAGADELLIC MOJO, 16 shot	2		Comets Peonies Fish Bursts Crackling	Red and green Comets climb high to beautiful Peony bursts with a crackling Fish effect	PYRO GLYPHICS 16 shot	2		Fish Glitter	Red and green swarms of wild flying mosquitoes (fish effect)	SWARMING SKEETERS 19 shot	2		Tourbillion Bursts	This is the actual item that defined the pyrotechnic effect of tourbillion (spinner silver showers).	TOOT 'n TWIRL 19 shot	2		Floral Bursts Crackling Glitter	Gold crackling flowers with silver glitter	WAR BIRDS 7 shot	2		Mines Floral Glitter Pearls	Glittering mines with multi color pearls timed for 4 unique effects.	GRUCCI MINESHELL MAYHEM 16 shot	2		My son picked up a bunch of Roman Candles, and some Space Cadet Rockets and we split a Case of Alien Triple Brake Shells (re wraps of Beihai Knock Three Times) & and a case of American Rising Beihai Quads, and he got about 8 miscellaneous United Pyro cakes. I also had 4 Boxes of Whistling Busters and 3 boxes of Rambo Kids left over from last year.About two months before the 4th I was able to hookup with some 20/100 Black Cat Firecrackers and some Magic Crystals. I also got some 16 in a box refill shells. I picked up a box of Beihai Rambo Kids and some Beihai Iron Revenger shells as well as some Beihai High 5 Ôs and Beihai Double Impact shells. I got some Critical Acclaim Re loadable Mines. I was also lucky enough to get some ExcaliburÕs too!There are only three firework companies that setup stands in our city. TNT, Blockbuster, & Phantom.I picked up two of the 500 gram Delirium Fountains from TNT ÒRed DevilÓ, and I picked up a Grucci New York Harbor & Patriotic Power Blast Fountain from Phantom. My son got a 500 gram Seventh Heaven by ShowTime at Block Buster. All of these Fountains were selling for $39.99 at the local stands. So we were waiting until 9:00 PM to start the show with Fountains. At 8:55 PM the cops drove down the street and I thought, oh well its not going to be so good this year. We waited till most of the folks on my street had been doing Fountains for about 30 minutes and then we started doing our 500-gram Fountains. The Grucci New York Harbor and The Delirium Fountains were well liked by all; we set them up on 5 ft ladders. By 9:30 the Aerials were flying everywhere you looked. We finished our Fountains and then did the Critical Acclaim Re Loadable Mines. Then the Mineshell Mayhems, They were the hit of the show!!! I took off for my backyard and I shot off all of my cakes back to back. All the while my son was shooting Artillery shells and Roman Candles. After about an hour we took a 5-minute rest break and as we stopped, another cop drives down the street. After the 5-minute break and checking to see if the fuzz had bailed we continued to challenge all shooters, shooting off Artillery shells until midnight, with a break now and then to do some Firecracker and Magic Crystals and 25 shot SaturnÕs.The next morning I got up before sunrise and saw that my next-door neighbor had fallout all over his cars, and his driveway was just covered big time! As the sun was coming out I grabbed some brooms and brushes and cleaned off all of his cars and swept his driveway clean before he woke-up. He has been putting up with my Aerials for 5 years now and I didnÕt want to make waves. I took the whole next day to clean and wash down the street and clean up the fallout from my backyard. I still need to work on the roof! It was the best 4th of July I have ever had, being a deprived California boy.Lessons learned this 4th.1) MINESHELL MAYHEMS are the best thing I have ever had! My neighbors could not get over them! I did see a neighbor who shot a Beyond Reality, but it was not as good as MINESHELL MAYHEM.2) ALIEN ABDUCTION, BLUE RINGED WILLOWS, SWARMING SKEETERS, RED, WHITE AND BOOM, WILLOW AMONG THE PALMS, and especially PYRO PANDEMONIUM are cakes that I will keep on my list of thing to get. To tell the truth all of the stuff we had this years was nice. But the PYRO PANDEMONIUM was voted best 200 Gram cake on my street.3) Artillery shells: What is the best Artillery shell? Rambo Kid or Excalibur. I say neither; Beihai Iron Revenger is my #1 the tails just put them over the top and the breaks are VERY close to Rambo Kids. Now the ExcaliburÕs go higher than Rambo kids so I guess they rate #2 and that leaves Rambo Kids as my #3 As far as Doubles, Triples, Quads and 5Õs. You canÕt beat Beihai!4) Buy all the Fountains at the Phantom showroom next time. I didnÕt bother in September because I knew I could get them at the local stands. The Grucci New York Harbor was $39.99 at the local fireworks stands. And they sell for 29.99 and buy 1 get 1 free at the showrooms $15.00 beats $40.005) Sending my wife to Las Vegas for the 4th to gamble with her mother was a great Idea, not having her freaking out and bitching all night was nice for a change.P.S. My wife came home with $800.00 more than she left with. But when she returned said, ÒNow this is the last time isnÕt it?Ó6) Learn Hypnosis? 
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We had a very good fourth. Glad you sent out your last minute update - it was very useful as it gave me a firing time for one of our finale items (Komodo 3000) and helped us coordinate mortars. Don't have much time to write now, but will do my best:

To pull off our show, I had to drive about 1,900 miles from my home (fireworks unfriendly) to my favorite fireworks wholesaler (very good prices) then on to a friend's house in a fireworks friendly state. My car was jammed packed with fireworks, which I had to camouflage in order to get through places where the items were illegal.

This was the biggest show I've ever done. We did a total of 20 'flights'. We fired a total of 450 mortars (single, double, quad, and 5-shot mix) in groups of 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, and 70 mortar flights. We also fired 72 cake items (generally 4 of the same item simultaneously). The cake finale was the z-firing Komodo 3000 referenced above with a flight of 70 mortars (all 3,4, and 5-shot shells)that were timed to begin just after the Komodo ended. 

We used Visco for the first time this year. It allowed us to sequence our mortars to fire when the cake items were ending so that the mini finale of the cake item went up at the same time as our mortars. Your fireworks guide, Bob, was a huge help in letting us know the performance characteristics and duration of these cakes!

We grouped our mortar tubes (HDPE) in sevens - basically a single tube surrounded by six others. We used industrial zip ties to secure and added copious amounts of duct tape as insurance. This turned out to be a very stable configuration - safe and easy to load and work with. We secured the mortar fuses to the Visco lead fuse with small zip ties rather than tape. We used two ties per fuse and only had four mortars fail to fire out of 450 - a very good failure rate, under 1%. 

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We had a party at my house with about 20 people. The neighbor across the street from me had about 35 people at his party. I had the best show around so people were bringing there chairs from around the block to watch and soon we had about 75 people out front of my house. Exotic mash and Gold Fever were the top hits. The crowd was clapping and cheering. The mines that I believe were by Cannon were also great! Exotic mash was so great!!! The effects and the way it spread out had the crowd in amazement! Also the crowd loved the four salutes at the end!!! 
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Well my show almost was right. I had roughly 70 cakes and mortar rounds. I have racks for series shots on the mortars. I laid out the show and it only took 6 sheets of plywood. I have a small pond, 1 acre here in South Florida, and I was able to have the main display there and then remote displays on each side. I use NSI dimmer packs and electric matches for the ignition and different Visco fuse for the timing of sections of the display. It all worked well. I did our show on the 2nd and your last email of info on cakes came on the 3rd and I had most of those cakes in my show, but with no info I did not know how to plan for them. The Komodo was a nice piece with lots of spread and height.

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Hi Bob,
We didn't have a big picnic and display like we often do. Just shot off some rockets, etc. Sometimes that can be almost as much fun as staging a big pyromusical "C" production. I did make a wheel using a disposable plastic reel from an
electronics tape and reel machine. I taped 4 fountains to it and chain fused them with
visco. This worked great.

What I did notice (here in CT) is that the neighborhoods were ROCKIN' this weekend!
Everywhere I drove, or just being at home, there were LOTS of (illegal) fireworks going
off.You could see them while driving and hear them sitting out on the deck. Some were
obviously bigger than 1.4.
 I love this as it shows people still have the spirit to resist what they consider to be a bad law that
denies them their right to shoot fireworks. A quiet 4th of July is a sad day.

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July 4th 2005. Over already. Know i have to wait another 364 days. Oh well. This year started out with me lurking on Pyro universe forever, then finally joining to ask somequestions and get a little more insight. I live in maryland so it's sort of hard to come by anything other then fountains unless I get them from someone. I started buying on Sunday June 19th, a week or two after the first of the tents opened up. I bought a Ratta Tat Tat and a Superior Blue Lagoon by Black Cat for 9.95. The next day I dug up my "stash" of firecrackers to see what I had left. I had 5 un-opened packs of Wolf Pack 16s. I also had one pack of 16 whee the first firecracker with the visco was removed by my brother. I refused that to the pack with some tape and it was ready to be fired. I also had 3 crackling balls and abuot 26 single silver salute brand firecrackers with the paper fuses. I usually save these for when I'm bored but its not really smart to light the paper fuses. I had about a foot of the paper fuse from the silver salutes that were taken off the string. I fused 8 silver salute crackers to it using tape and twist ties and then 2 crackling balls. I tried to time it so it would all go of at once but the visco burned longer then I expected on the balls so the firecrackers blew and then 2 secodns later the balls went. It wasnt the effect I was looking for but thats ok. Tuesday, June 21st I walked up to the local grocery store with my older brother and got him to buy a Firecracker fountain, a pack of Moondance Fountains, and a Tijuana Tremor. Then I went to a tent that was outside of the store to look around. As soon as I walked into the tent I got kicked out because I wasnt 18. They wouldnt even let me look at the things they had, so I walked another 5 minute to the stand I went to over the weekend. That guy didnt care and let me buy some extra stuff that I wanted. I got Jade Flowers, Butterfly flowers, Crackling Cactus, Blue Sea, Boom Box, and intrepid Flame. That was 19 dollars and some change making the total for the day about 30 dollars. For the rest of the week I didnt get anything else except for a crackling jet by phantom that I bought of my friend for a dollar. on Sunday the 26th, I went back to the tent that wouldnt let me in before with my dad. I got some items that I like, Toy Solider, The Space Lamp, Killer Bees, and Naughty croc, which is a re wrap of the Spiral Lite fountain by TNT, or vise versa. I also got a new item called Plum Flowers report Spring that didnt have a manufacturer on it. It wasnt anything special. Friday the 1st I went to The Baltimore Orioles game and saw a fireworks display that was shot from the open area next to the bullpens. They used alot of mines and shells. I only recall seeing 2 cakes being shot off which were just red and green colored pearls. The finale was good and loud with alot of salutes. Saturday I just sat on my deck and watched alot of fireworks going off in the park behind my house. Sunday was the night I was shooting my stuff. I started off with 2 of the firecracker strings for some noise. They seem alot louder when your lighting them at night. Next came the firecracker/crackling ball combo I made. It was ok but as stated before, the balls came 2 seconds after the crackers ruining the effect. Then I worked my way to the Moondance's and the "Flowers" fountains. The tubes in the butterfly one were loose so I was questioning lighting it after reading about where loose tubes can do. I lit it anyways and it performed fine. After that I lit the rest, Killer Bees, Crackling Cactus, Space Lamp, Plum w/ Report, Naughty Croc, Toy Soldier, Boom Box, Blue Sea, Intrepid Flame (not worth it at all. Its size is very decieving. Half of the package is open space), Blue Lagoon, Firecracker Fountain, Tijuana Tremor, and Ratta Tat Tat. The last four everyone (meaning the 5-10 people watching) liked. I was disappointed by the Firecracker Fountain. The other crackling fountains were way louder, including Blue lagoon and Ratta Tat Tat. Then after the fountains I lit the helicopter. It spun for a second, but i guess the asphalt wasnt smooth enough. It flipped over and sprayed it sparks on the ground and sort of blew up. Oh well. Other then that the rest of my 4th was great. 

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This was written in 2002É.excuse the delay!This year started off pretty much undecided as far as pyro goes. Living on the north shore of Long Island , NY only 25 miles from Òground zeroÓ there was some question over what would prevail this Fourth, patriotism or terrorist paranoia. The summer season already seemed to be off to a slow start. several local displays had been canceled, Early season bookings had been down for the two major display companies in the area. Former New York City mayor Guiliannis suppression of fireworks in New York city had the long term effect of eliminating a convenient source of fireworks for many out here on the island.Even before 9-11 New Years and the Fourth had been getting quieter each year Gulianni was in office. .Other signs of patriotism where abundant, flags, parades abound, but for every flag there seemed to be another warning of potential terrorist activity, explosives, biological and nuclear threats - even worse - the bottom falling out of the stock market!As the Fourth approached all the big local shows where on schedule promising larger than ever displays with patriotic themes. This year I chose to watch a barge show in the harbor near my home but after the show I was determined to find some local fellow pyros who refused to be intimidated by current events. To be on the safe side I went through my stash and pulled a substantial collection of big fountains so at the very least I could have some fun that wouldnÕt frighten any body and cause them to call out the National Guard.on my behalf! Of course while selecting fountains I coldnt resist grabbing a few new cakes that I picked up over the winter..So as the evening approached my youngest son and I loaded up the jeep and headed down to the beach. The barge show was OK, the crowd was appreciative with lots of cheering and horn blowing after the finally, someone was passing out sparklers and for once nobody left there car alarm active! (boy do I hate that!) Over all pretty nice evening so far.although subdued compared to pre Gulianni days, when the crowd at the beach would compete with the professional show.As the crowd dissipated I keep an eye out for class c rising above the tree line in the surrounding neighborhoods. Sure enough I spot some small rockets coming from a familiar spot on the horizon. We take off in the direction of the rockets to see if its one of our local pyro cronies. As we approach it becomes obvious , we had only seen half the rockets the rest had been careening haphazardly around the neighborhood mostly horizontally.. turns out the culprit was my former business partner. A little background on this guy, first of all I love him ( in a manly way of course) in the past we had made some good money together doing things other companies in our field simply couldnÕt do. This guy, like my self had been into pyro from an early age and he is a rather brilliant engineer----but he has this uncanny habit of letting the simplest things get the best of him, kind of like the absent minded professor character. To get back to the story, it turns out his kids are having a pool party / barbecue and he is providing the pyro entertainment and about to run out of his meager supply of class c rockets, a perfect venue for my collection of big fountains. What could be safer, a decent sized yard with an above ground pool between the fireworks and raised deck with spectators.. To his credit He already had a 4X4 foot sheet of plywood on the lawn and the garden hose at the ready, looks like he learned something sense he burned his shed down a few years ago. So we grab the two storage bins out of the jeep. I like these bins for informal class c storage they are water proof and if you throw a few beach blankets in them on top of the fireworks you might even survive a cursory inspection by the local police. Like most of us he gets almost as much pleasure out of examining the fireworks as in lighting them. We line the fountains up on the workbench and check them out, yeah there only fountains but they are big and some of the beast performers on the market, some great stuff collected over several years. Of course every one wants to see whatÕs in the other storage bin. The answer is forget it! thereÕs not enough clearance here for that stuff. By the way, the reason the other bin is even out of the jeep is because fireworks are illegal here and under certain circumstances the police can impound your car if found with illegal substances of any kind in it.! Not worth the chance, better to loose the pyro than the jeep! As we worked our way through some great fountains the temptation to escalate the activity to some of the cakes from the forbidden bin is too much. Three other homes in the area had brought out some substantial class c. Not to be one to ignore peer pressure or be outdone by other back yard amateurs I dig around an pullout a cake I had bought several of and had not yet seen in action and set it aside. The cake was a Crossette King, pretty hefty with about eight fat tubes, should make a good finally and fairly safe fired off the plywood sheet. I packed the bin off closer to the jeep in preparation to leave after this cake. I figured it would draw too much attention and wanted to be ready to go (before the police arrived if nessary). So the time comes there is nothing left to shoot but the crossette cake, my buddy, remember the absent muded professor, sets the cake in the middle of the ply wood and yells over for someone to man the garden hose just incase! He crouches down with his torch and as soon as ignition is detected he kicks off the plywood and jumps back - then its one of those moments frozen in time - which is a fairly common occurrence in the world of pyro - the first to speak is my 11 year old son, a diminutive Òoh s**t !Ó followed by a corus of more serious expletives.! we all saw it, when he jumped back his foot pushed the plywood half out from under the cake ! there it was teetering on the edge of the plywood with the burning fuse just entering the cake body, first shot nice blue comet, good lift, perfect break, nice crosset effect. Next shot already on the way , turns out this is a pretty fast cake. So far both shots have been on the side of the cake still on the plywood by now the third shot is up, unfortunately this shot was off the edge of the plywood and tips the cake or maybe it was the force of the garden hose that tipped it? Now the cake is angled directly at the deck with all the guests and my buddies wife and the hose is not even slowing the comets down! IÕm happy to say at this point in the story that in the end nobody got hurt and no serious damage was done which is good because the last ten seconds of that cake looked like something out of the old Our Gang \ Little Rascals shows!It didnÕt take the kids on the deck long to figure out the pool was the best place to be with these comets whacking the house and still breaking into perfect crossettes a few feet over there heads and my buddies wife, she used one of those big aluminum pizza trays as a shield till she got close enough to beat him with it..The remaining embers around and under the deck where put out and a quick check of the surrounding area indicated all was OK, the kids got out of the pool laughing hysterically, the dogs returned and even my buddies wife had to laugh. With the sound of a siren off in the distance it was time to say goodbye (just in case, you never know) and take off to our next stop .We continued on to another favorite pyro spot and encountered a rather surprising situation. We spent the rest of the evening parked next to two police patrol cars in a county park watching a group young adults shoot 3 and 4 inch class b till around mid night when one of the police officers casually got out of the car, walked over and asked them to stop, which of course they did. Maybe in the scale of things (after 9-11) the cops didnÕt find this activity so awful, maybe they too felt the insidious almost subliminal loss of freedom that the threat of terrorism produces.In all it was a pretty decent forth, still not up to pre Guilanni days but good none the less. The turn out for the MacyÕs show was bigger than ever, abundant public displays, and those who had fireworks shot them. No reported injuries or terrorist activities to report. 
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Our 4th was incredible, we shot on the 3rd but we'll call it the 4th, because the 3rd gives no clue as to the holiday involved. We started planning about 3 months ago, and started collecting mortar racks about a year ago. The plan, which was similar to last year's event, was a show that started fast, slowed down for our home made large shells and effects, and then ramped up to a huge finale. All on a field that's big enough to handle 8" shells according to NFPA guidelines.

 I guess I'll start with the numbers and then move on to the story of the show. 350 3" shells (final finale), 2 - 30' flatbed trailers packed tight with several thousand dollars of class C (first finale), 103 - homemade 4" shells for the body, 18 homemade 4" mines, several 5"&6" homemade mines, 36 - homemade 5"&6" shells for the special shell segment, one homemade 7" hammer shell, one beautiful 24" girandola (obviously homemade), 7- 2lb BP rockets with 4" ball shell headers (all homemade), 2 - 8" crown brocades (donated to the cause), several lance pieces, a 4" salute, and a special retina burning magnesium fireball.

 The 3" shells used in the finale were commercial shells that needed to be lifted and leadered, so 3 of us spent quite a bit of time making lift charge, cutting leaders, and making finale chains. We ended up using a plastic bag filled with lift, and a leader running from it. Those were all placed in the guns and then the shells could be placed in at our leisure. The 4" shells were hand made from the bottom up. All of the stars, lift, and break, were made by us. Even the passfires were our homemade black match. Time consuming? Yes. Worth it? Hell yes! I think 18 were made with bottom shots. These were the body of the show. The 5" & 6" shells were all made over the past 3 months, again using all homemade material, these even had rammed spollettes. A friend brought out an 8 break 4" to test as well, what a sight that thing was. The same friend brought out the Girandola as well as few other special shells including a 5" hammer, and a 6" ring and bowtie.

 Friday night, the 1st, we began making all of our fan rack finale chains. We have a limited supply of ematches, so we try to save them for the class C. We have had trouble in the past with moisture killing our flat match though. Not having a box of water resistant quick match at hand, we made our own using flat match and cellophane box tape. It took a while, but they were reasonably water resistant and worked quite well for one of those last minute fixes to a common problem. It took 4 of us most of the evening to make water resistant chains and insert our lift and leader contraptions into the chains for 200 shells. We quit when our fingers were sore, and all of them were done.
 
 Saturday morning, we started on the chains for the other 150 finale shells, which we tied with buckets, cut flat match tied into penny wrappers. This went much faster, and didn't need to be water resistant because all of those racks were mounted on a trailer that we could cover and uncover at will. We took all of the racks out to the field to set them up early, dry them in and such. This all went smooth and the field looked relatively dry compared to what we had seen in the past. We went back to the workshop to finish tying chains, and to help each other with last minute projects. Sometime around 6PM, we finished the finale chains and turned our attention to all the stars and lift we had left. This can only mean one thing... MINES!! So paper was cut, lift was weighed out, and sabot disks were made for the larger ones. We already knew we needed 18 4" mines for an effect I had planned so we started there. Then we moved on to 5 - 5" mines, and 3 6" mines. All I can say is, thankfully, some of our guns are steel. Sometime around midnight, it was time to quit. There was long day in store for us tomorrow, and we all knew it.

 Morning of, they're telling us that it will rain off and on all day, but you can only do what you can do. This is fairly typical in summer here, so we had already made some contingency plans. My big canopy was already on site, so we have a dry spot we can work with. And with that we begin transporting all of the class C to the site, which is only 15 minutes away. We arrive, and everything is as we have left it, but no one has shown up to start helping yet. We know they'll be here soon to start fusing the C cakes and begin loading the finale, so the 2 canopies go up, the cases of C get put under one, and some tables are set up. 2 of us leave to get more cases of C, and before we can get back, there is a downpour. It didn't seem to last that long, but our once fairly dry field, was now a muddy mess, and the cases of C took a beating. I had covered them with some visqueen before I left, but the rain was apparently sideways... what friggin' luck... Fortunately, we moved fast enough so that the C wasn't ruined. Help arrived in the form of several non pyros who were willing but not yet able. I instructed them on how to place a piece of quick match completely over the visco on the cake, insert the ematch into the other end of the quickmatch, then secure it with foil tape. This site happens to have a couple of empty flat bed trailers we useÊ to make fronts of C cakes. The theory being, if one is nice, a case is better. We began piling everything up, and immediately realized after the first van load made it to the trailer, we've got too much... WAY too much. This wouldn't seem like a bad problem to have, but the rain has made it impossible to put anything the ground. Not to mention we've had to cover and uncover things so often, we've been robbed of valuable set up time. So I start laying out cakes on the trailers in an effort to fit everything in. A daunting task with stacks of fused cakes 4' and 5' tall. I don't think there will be much choreography this year...

 We started with a Lightning Strike (large Z cake)Êat the end of each trailer (4Ê total) fused to go 2 at a time. 10 Rowell Girandola cakes fused to go in a front, 15 hyper 200g z cakes fused to go at once, 3 800 and 3 180 shot saturn missile batteries fused to go at once, 6 Color nightmares at once, 6 colorful sky at once, Bad Ass Tubes placed everywhere, 5 more cases of Roswells placed around, a case of Extreme Machines, a case of good Firing Squads, a case of Silver chrysanthemums, 2 cases of Norads, a case of Hot Tamale, 3 cases of Now Fear This, a case of True Blue, 2 cases of Blast City, 2 cases of Evil Empire, 2 cases of Killer willow, a case of 4x4 overkill, and that's just what I remember. None of this was planned to go off in less than 6 cakes at a time. Here comes the rain again, luckily I brought a huge tarp. Unluckily, we can't work while it's raining. It was a short shower, but more water on our mud bog of a field isn't welcome. That's the 5th time we've endured one of these little squalls, WHEN WILL IT STOP!?! Luck has given me another good turn, one of the guys who was helping fuse cakes also does sound systems. Saints be praised, he knows and understands why I want series wiring! It's almost 5:30 now and I've set him and a helper to the job of wiring up the two trailers. No time to figure out cue assignments, so I just told him to start putting them on the board in the same rows, on cues right next to each other. We ended up with 25 cues of class C.

 I've started to fuse my fanned 4" mines and shells. The weather seems to be getting better, a slight breeze, I think I can see sun. Finally onÊone of my personal projects, but it takes until 6:30 to fuse them and time them. That's ok though, everything seems to beÊrunning smoothly. Until 6:45PM... one of the main guys who is doing this with me comes to me and asks for help with the wiring of some of the bigger portions of the finale. I look and he has the wires all messed up. "Whoever did this shouldn't be allowed to touch a spool of wire.", I told him, to which he replied "Fine! Do it yourself." Tensions had been mounting all day. The same guy had beenÊcomplaining that he didn't like my finale design, apparently it took forever to add in the timing but it's too late to change it now. Another of our cohorts is nowhere near done with his segment, and it's not looking good. The shadows are growing long and there is still so much to do. We had all wanted to finish by about 5:30, go home and take showers, get something to eat, and then come back out to have fun feeling refreshed. No such luck this year. We all went without food for the entire day thinking if I just go a little longer we'll be done and I can go get something proper to eat. Two of the guys are ready to fall out and they find someone to cook up some hot dogs. No time for buns, we've got to eat them where we stand.

 I sort out the wiring for the big finale and all of it's parts. Once again things are actually looking up. Our friend with the Girandola has showed up and has set up his own stuff. The 8" shells and gun show up at around 7:30. We might actually pull this thing off, I think to myself. I'm going over my mentalÊlist of show prep, and realize that I never made any fireballs! Panic mode once again sets in, it's 8:30, the light is dwindling, I just have to get the material and whip up a couple. I prefer a front ofÊ2lb fireballs shot close to the larger 5 gallon variety. And just for a kick, this time I'm using at least one magnesium fireball, a blinding beast to be sure. I get my fireball box out of the truck and my heart sinks when I realize that I only brought one can to make them with. Each fireball goes into a #10 food can, of which I have loads at my shop, but it's too late for that now. So I make 1 quick magnesium fireball and place it behind the C trailers in the dead center of the field. I've got special plans for this puppy. We're finally done, 6 more cues for the finale, another cue for the racks of 3" crossing comets and we're done electrically. The rest will be hand fired, it's slower, but more fun. I've actually got time to walk the crowd, and say high to my family, get some water and the like.

 I head back out to the field around 9, only to find out our partner in all of this is still setting up. As usual, his plans were too big, and he didn't have enough help to make it happen. He's still got people assembling set pieces?!?!? I go over and ask how long, he tells me 10-15 minutes tops. The mosquitoes are already out in force, and it's getting darker by the minute. There are no outside lights to speak of, so everything is done with headlamps and flashlights. 9:15 come and goes, they still aren't done. One of my "friends" decides to defy me and light one end of a rolled out 16000 cracker string. I begged him to pile it on top of itself, or light it in multiple places, but he's never seen, or heard the annoyance of this beast and refuses. He walks away proud of himself, he can be really annoying at times. 9:25 comes, the cracker string is still going, god I hate that thing. The set pieces are in place when I find out that he doesn't have any cues programmed in to his computerized system. I told him to have that stuff done before hand, but he never listens. With all of his last minute stuff, I've tried to getÊhim to just switch to a switching box like I use, but he has to get fancy and hold up the show. 9:30 rolls up on us and we're tired of hearing that damn cracker string, tired of waiting for the set pieces. He was supposed to start the show, we tell him he's cut from the start and will have to go after the big shells, before the finale.

 Time to get this thing roaring, the only sound louder than the mosquitoes in my ears is that stupid cracker string. The plan is to light one of the 8" shells to kick things off, hit the 7 rockets, and then the girandola. However, our friend with the girandola won't light it while the crackers are going off. Rightfully so too, part of the girandola's mystique is the roar when it lifts off. We trudge through the swamp to get to wear Jack S (description not a name) has put the crackers to see how to get them to stop. We waded through ankle deep mud to get to them, and just as we got there, as if to mock us, they stopped in mid chain. I immediately signal for Jack S to hand light the 8"... Wow. The first thing to come to mind is that's an amazing shell, the next is, if the cops don't come now, they're not coming. As the crowd cheers, the 7 rockets are lit in quick succession, beautiful headers! He has done it again. Then the girandola fuse pops and it spins to life, this is the tensest moment in the short life of a lit girandola. Will it fly up or sideways? We watch it close and it's 20 drivers shoot it to the moon! It went so high in fact that the 5" shell of shells on top looked like a 3", the crowd is going absolutely nuts now though. 99% of them had never seen anything like that before. Within seconds of the girandola ending it's flight, three of us begin hand lighting the 4" body. Not too fast, not too slow. We're all wearing sound attenuation ear protection for the hand lighting, boy they sure do save the ears. One of the random bottom shots goes off and I felt it... I mean there was a shock wave. I couldn't hear how loud it was because of my ear protection, so I took off the head phones and listened for the next one. BOOOM! I look immediately at my friend who made those shells and said holy crap, what did you put in those? Apparently solid spiking does wonders for the power of a bottom shot. Works for me, works for the crowd! We hit the fan racks which each shooting 3 - 4" shells and 3 seconds later 3 4" mines with a salute in each. They worked out great, I'll have to put more effort into those next year. Almost all of the body 4"s are gone so I run down the field to see if the set piece guy will be ready to go after the last 4. That's when I find out he can't make his system work and will have to hand light the whole thing. Bad news, but the show must go on, I push his segment back again to after the larger shells. It'll be a nice little break before we smack them upside the eyeballs with the class C trailers. We run out to the 5" & 6" guns which are preloaded with about 1/3 of our shells. The 4" 8 break comes first. I've seen the tests on this one, it never held up out the gun before, but boy did it this time! You could see it's almost 3' of body spinning in the sky as it reached apogee and all 8 breaks went in a quick succession of rings. Gorgeous shell, then on to some great shells of our own. We quickly realized that the rain that had been our nemesis earlier, was really aÊgift. Some of the stars are coming all the way to ground, it happens, but the wet ground makes it all good.

 As the larger shells dwindled in numbers and we found the bottoms of our ready boxes, all that were left were our 'last minute mines'. Not even 24 hours old, they were just babies. Impressive and high reaching babies full of every left over star and random shell in my shop. The crowd usually thinks these are flower potting shells and worry for our safety. No matter how many time I try to tell them what they are, and how much fun they are to light and run from, they won't stop worrying. About half way through those, I told two of the guys to run up and tell them to start hand lighting the set pieces. As the last 6" mine belched fire from it's steel maw, the set pieces came to life. The crowd particularly liked the alligator, which seemed right at home in this mud pit. I walked down to my table where my switches were to wait for the cuddly little set pieces to be over, the goose, the unicorn, the battling tanks, and just as the American flag piece burned out, I started hitting cues on the class C trailers. The wall of colored fire this thing created was a spectacle and a half. I had no idea what I was lighting, so with each switch of a cue, I was as surprised as everyone else. When the Lightning Strikes lit and started what can only be described as a machine gun volley pointed toward the sky, we were dumfounded. When I hit the next switch and 10 Roswells started, all 10 girandolas took off at the same time in an ear destroying frenzy of screaming UFO's, we were all jumping and screaming in the background. Cue after Cue, the fronts of cakes spent their various payloads, and cue after cue, the crowd screamed in excitement. We were certainly battering their senses after so much oohs and aahs. And the trailer was battering my head after a relatively burn free night. I was on the wrong side of the trailers, and all of the fall out, which was considerable, was smacking me in the head... I loved it!

 A quick cut to 4 shots of 3" crossing comets that last only seconds before I started the 350 shot 3" finale. As that began, so did a flight of 5" shells. Unfortunately, those much bemoaned leader set ups, began to come apart, a few shells were knocked from their guns and ignited on the ground. Time to send in the troops to hit those chains, "Light it again, light it again!" One spectator said there was a clear black silhouette of a shooter against an intense fire storm that would have made a great picture. Once the finale was completely done, all shells gone, I waited for the cheering to die down and then shot a 4" salute we had hiding in the back of the field. Everyone looked to the center of the field when they heard theÊlift and just before it broke, I lit the magnesium fireball. I couldn't blind them all before it was over now could I?

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 There was one main theme in everyone's description of the show to me. I've heard this from several people who don't know each other, soÊI know it has some semblance of truth. The comment, "There really is no way to describe what I saw... that was amazing..." I'm told there were some 200 people at our 'backyard display'. My fourth of July started friday July 1, where i catered my best friends stag party. That night carried over to saturday where my best friend got married. We celebrated that night with drinking and some mortars. The next day my neighborhood had their fourth of July party where we all got drunk and lit of some displays of pyrotechnics. Just when you think my weekend couldn«t get any better on the fourth i had my party with kegs. That night i must have lit off my best display of fireworks ever. It was a great holiday and can«t wait for 361 more days. 
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I was a little worried because I live in Socal and the local police released a stament that said they were realy cracking down on fireworks this year. With over 140 shells and some cakes I wasn't sure how long I would it would be before I got paid a visit. My entire neighborhood's sky was filled all night long, the best displays I have seen to date. I didn't see one officer. It was great fun, everyone had great suff. They were 5 or 6 kids at our barbq and they were totaly amazed. and that is what it is all about.
 I shot Blue Ringed Willows, Midnight Monsoon, Solar Explosion, Swarming Skeeters, and a few other cakes (Willows, Mosoon, and Skeeters were great!) I also shot New York Harbor Show, Tyfoon, Flash Bombs, Skyfest, Festival balls, Mighty Mights and a few other kits. Great Fun! 

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The fourth was WONDERFUL. We have a fireworks store, and although the day started out slow, by mid-afternoon things had REALLY picked up. I love being able to help people pick out what they want to see. So many people don't know anything about fireworks and being able to help them is wonderful. 

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I have this friend in my church that is a licenced pyrotechnic. He has this annual show that he puts on for this somewhat rural area where they live. The guy down the street that owns a conveinience store pays my friend to put it on for the community. Last year was his first year to start it. 

We actually did it on the 3rd this year, so it wasn't quite the same, but oh well. The team of 8 of us met at 4:00 that afternoon to discuss how was the best way to organize/change the show from last year. My friend and I met at noon to lay out the fireworks...the order to shoot that is. 

The way we did it was set 3 tables up spaced about 40 feet apart and then 2 more tables 40 more feet back from those out in this field. So we kinda had a zig zag pattern going on. The back two tables were designated the 'shell' tables where all the class C shells were shot from. Each table had 7 different tubes on a rack where the shells were shot from. The front 3 tables each had a loading table behind them and then the actual firing table. My friend does not like any kind of fountains so all the front 3 tables were were cakes that actually shoot up in the sky. Each of the front 3 tables had a firing person and a loader who would load the next firework on the firing table. 

My friend who is licenced is able to shoot the class B fireworks. He has an 8 mortar rack that he shoots them from. They are 5 inch tubes. He was in the VERY back shooting 5" salutes every so often. They are soooooo loud and I LOVE them! 

We had patriotic music playing through a professional sound system that had to have a spread of like 300 degrees...many many speakers. 

The best way that we have found to light the fireworks is take a regular road flare and duct tape it to a wooden stick. Make sure the stick is thick enough to support the flare or else you have a problem. 

The show kicked off right at 9:35. We had no fires (thankfully - because we were in a field that had been bush hogged about a week before, which means dry hay!). We aimed at having a 25 minute non-stop, no pauses show. Our music was recorded for exactly 25 minutes. The last firework got done at 10:02.

The new thing this year that we got and loved was the zipper type cakes.
 Our favorite was the 192 shot "Big Boys Toys". It was insane. Another one that surprised us was the "El Dorado." It packs a very big punch for only a 32 shot cake. I believe both are made by Brothers. 

We got an overwhelming response from everyone watching which we estimated to be about 4,000. We hope to make this thing a yearly thing that gets bigger and better every year. It is already on its way this year because the size of fireworks we shot last year for the finale is what we shot for the regular show this year!!! Anyways we had a great time with no injuries. Oh by the way, what we shot retails around $14,000...fun stuff shooting that many fireworks that you didn't have to pay a dime for!!!

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My fourth Rocked in Mandan ND.

I shot the fireworks at the Mandan Rodeo Days!!!

We lit it up big time!!!!

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we sold fireworks from June 8 thru July 7. stayed open on the 4thÊfrom 7:00am till 4:00am Tuesday. we are exhausted.

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 Part of my 4th I can talk about, part I can't, the part I will talk about was great. I hadÊÊa large group of family and friends over, for a cookout, and then I start the younger ones off with sparklers and other fun things, for them, while it was light enough to keep them, completely under supervision. I started the good stuff off at 9:30, and went through about 600 dollars worth, of at ( wholesale prices) thank you Victory Fireworks, I did a lot of Atom and Hydrogen bombs 3 at a time, and a lot of Monarch and Saturn Missle batterys 500 count, I had 5 people setting then off and 3 people feeding them. I had a couple of sets rigged up with 30 or more devices, on each so 1 fuse set them all off. Next year I am setting it up to go off to music and intergrate my computer and stereo with electric fuses. All of the spectators and the nieghbors appluded, and said that my display beat any small town thing, they had ever seen . I will be getting ready for next year, starting in a month.

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My dad and friend and me had our own firework show. some people told us it was better then the towns show. it was 15 minutes long but the action never stoped me and my friend had are own show which consested of 50 large rockets, 19 roman candles, 12 cakes and a few fountains also we had 27 single shotÊmotars on one fuse which lastedÊ7 minutes. Then it went to 36 mortars(12 singles, 12 cylinder doubles, 6 penutes, and 6 triples arranged in various ways). which lasted 3 minutes. then it hit my dads firework show which had 36 more mortars just like mine, 20 roman candles, 48 large rockets, 11 cakes and 4 500gram finalis which lasted 5 minutes. these were all on one fuse, we used over 100 feet of fuse and alot of feet of masking tape and that was our firework show.

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I have two stories. On July 2nd, my wife and I went to a party in the countryside. The host is a friend of ours who goes in with me for some fireworks every year. We give advice to each otherÊon what works and what goes well and not so well. This year his show was about $1,200 retail value (but he did not pay that much for it). When we get there, he looks at me and says "You realize you have have to help me light all of this tonight." My very pregnant wife was kind enough to let me have some fun that evening. We had aboutÊ84 mortar shells, 3 500 gram cakes, and 26 200 gram cakes. Everything had been either screwed down to boards or had liquid nails on it to keep it in place on small tables. The whole show took about 20 minutes to set off. My main job was to load mortars into the tubes and tell him what to light in the sequence we planned. The best part wasÊstaggering of the 3 500 gram cakes (Assault Team, Fandango, and Waterfall) with 2ÊRodeo West cakes, a roll of 2000 firecrackers, and 10 mortar shells for the finale. There was so much noise and color. The crowdÊof 50 roared when it was over and they are still talking about the effects. Most now wantÊto add to the show for next year. My friend and I had sweat running down our heads and our shirts were soaked. The combination of fireworks worked out really well thanks to the buyers guide I purchased.Ê
 
The second story is not quite so big. I went to another party on the 4th, with my pregnant wife in tow (she gave birth on the 7th at 3:22am). I was only doing fountains like Tangerine and some smaller ones after the main fireworks show for the town we were in were over. Everyone at the party really liked my small display which lasted about 10 minutes or so. As I am hosing down the boards, a neighbor from across the street comes over with his two daughters. He comes up to me and says "Did you just set those things off that I saw?" I responded with a yes. He then hands me some fireworks (mortars and some saturn missle batteries) and says "Would you mind setting these off for us?" My jaw dropped, and of course I felt obligated to set off these "free fireworks" for his family. I put a 16 shot saturn in with it that I neglected to get out of my car. The owner of the house laughed and still is commenting on the fact that he can't believe that a perfect stranger to me would come up and ask that I entertain him. It was a good night. I later went over to the guy's house and we talked for about 15 minutes about fireworks.

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 Hope you had a great 4th. Mine was pretty good. I went to the beach again, but this time I went to a beach in Santa Cruz called Seabright Beach. It was a lot like Beercan Beach, except there were a few more drunken idiots shooting roman candles at each other and annoying others. Besides that, we had a good time. We lit fireworks for a good two hours straight. One of my favorites was the Magnum Bravo. I didn't have much time to set up a big show, so one of the small things I didÊwas fuse together 3 salute shells and a Gold Fever. I tried to time it so that just as the Gold Fever was coming to an end, the 3 salute shells would go off. It worked out perfectly and the crowd responded with loud cheering and clapping. All in all it was a good 4th, but next year will be better! I plan on leaving California for the 4thÊand going to aÊstate like Washington or Nevada,Êwhere theÊcool fireworks are legal and you don't need to be constantly looking over your shoulder andÊworrying about some dick cop coming and taking all your stuff from you and busting you for having a safe, fun time.

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Had a great 4th!! Bought a ton of fireworks (literally) from Victory in Wisconsin based a lot on your reviews. For the most part found them to be in agreement with my friends & mine opinions. Started with some small fountains for the kids - some Killer Bees & a Skyscraper. I loved the Skyscraper - long lasting & annoying. We then went with a 500 g cake called the Americana. Real nice effects with beautiful breaks. Had one called Buck Fever that was real popular - might want to try one. Whirlwind of the Caribbean was very popular too though I think it would be even better with some different colors. One disappointment was the Stompin Show 500 g fountain. Had a better show from some cheaper pieces. Glorious Eldorado was a winner also.
 I also tried your trick of looping one of the long strings (4582) of firecrackers. Lasted about a minute with me sitting close-by with a big grin. Gotta try the 16,000.
 The 2 biggest hits of the evening wereTask Force & the 750 shot Saturn. The Task force was a nice finale with beautiful fan effect & nice variety, The Saturn was intense with all those missiles going off and seemingly every 5th one a tracer leaving a red tail behind. SWEET!
 The double time rocket was a big loser. Had a nice star break but wouldn't go very high. In fact one went off about 10 feet up and started a grass fire. I tried breaking the last 8 inches of the stick off and got rid of the plastic nose cone - worked much better.
 Also won't buy the Magic Wand hand fountain again. Started off nice with lots of crackle but that stopped after 10 seconds and the rest of the time I felt like I was directing traffic with a road flare.
 Didn't get a chance to see all that I had bought - some little ones and a big one called the Tommy Gun. Guess I'll have to do some more product evaluation. 
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We had a decent 4th---actually shot 3 shows and saw an awesome city display in this small town in Illinois.

We had about 12 nice repeaters, over 80 shells and some rockets to shoot. We built 2 12-tube racks in milk crates, which were very simple to build. One was 4 rows of 3 tubes fanned out, the other just two rows of 5 straight up and then two singles behind those. We used tubes we bought from Noel---the only way to go.

We also built a very simple rack for shooting clusters of rockets and roman candles. In a milk crate we took 6 tubes from mortar kits and angled them slightly, tying the top of the tubes to the sides of the crate, and screwed the bases to a board we tied into the bottom. 

We shot lots of stuff on the 3rd. We fused shells together in clusters. My son tied together 12 Double Impact shells, timing them perfectly---about 2-3 seconds apart. It was terrific. he also tied together a big cluster of rockets---thunder sticks along with Go Getters and Trill Whistle rockets. It was a real crowd pleaser. 

We liked the Excalibur shells, but not much (if any) better than the Pyro King and Iron Revenger shells (very similar). The comet tails are beautiful, and the shells produced bright, colorful effects. We mixed them up in sets of twelve, along with Triple Impact and some 5-break shells. The angled rack was really nice.

Our favorite repeaters were SilverSonic Warheads, Gold Fever and Baja Bomber. 

Exotic Mash was great too. I'd love to produce an "all peaceful" show sometime---items that are beautiful and not very noisy. No whistles or big bangs, just nice effects that are pleasing and calm.

On July 2 my boys and a nephew enjoyed a trip into Indiana to pick up some extras---shopped some stores and saw some great items. We were very impressed with the selection at Crazy Kaplans' on Rt. 30 just across the Illinois border. Lots of stuff. All the stores are pretty similar in their pricing.

On the less peaceful side, the crowd was very excited by a couple of large Roller Coaster celebration roll with the head bomb. Its really intense and the flashes are blinding.

We were fortunate to be shooting about 200 feet out in a bean field with lots of room. We did have a very low break from a High Five shell, and an Excal exploded in the tube. It did not rupture the tube, but did knock the plug most of the way out. It was scary hearing the lift charge and having nothing come out---we were just waiting for that second bang---and it was fierce.

We topped of our shows with a couple of Super Rockets. WOW!!!

Last night the kids were shooting some smaller items in the back yard---fountains, small rockets, roman candles & stuff. One rocket went sideways (one of the things I dislike about them---not always predictable) and it rattled around in the tree line at the back of the yard. We thought nothing of it because it was a small rocket that seemed to burn out completely near the top of the trees.

Fortunately, we were up late. Some of us had noticed earlier that it smelled like a campfire outside. At 2:00 AM we noticed the source---a large hollow stump among the trees in the back was on fire. A hot, ROARING fire that reached 10-15 feet up! We frantically got the hose on it and subdued it. Fortunately, only the stump burned, but had we not noticed it---well, I shudder to think of it. We got it stopped just as my mother-in-law was preparing to dial the fire department, which would have been a huge debacle and embarrassment. 

We laughed later on...and were very puzzled as to how the thing got going. The things we shot last night were so innocuous...it seemed impossible that that rocket could have started that fire.
 The common denominator was, of course, "those damn fireworks".
 Unfortunately, the incident increased the already present anxiety of some in our family about the risk of shooting fireworks around here...so this may have been our last year. I hope not, but I hate the feeling of being responsible for near misses and potential disaster.

But everyone did seem to enjoy our shows---especially me and the kids. It adds so much to the 4th of July.

I hope to send some pictures of our racks. We wanted to video tape our show, but just didn't get it all set up.

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Well, I hope everyone had an awesome 4th. This year was easily the best 4th i've ever had. Living in NJ and being 17 years old there aren't all that many places to buy fireworks, yet I lucked out and my sister attended college in Charleston, South Carolina. This year when we stopped I made a small purchase of about $100 to ad to my stash. I had about $300 worth of fireworks left from last year so with this purchase and another $100 order of cakes and shells I was set. Unfortunately, I didn't want to test my luck much with the cops this year so I still have yet to buy any 500g cakes. 

 Now to the story. I had been anxious for the 4th so I started lighting very small items such as jumping jacks , bees, and small fountains just to get it out of my system. This continued, along with other small stuff like roman candles, etc. until the 3rd. On the 3rd my parents told me to stop lighting stuff in our yard since the smell of smoke was so bad. So I packed up some bottle rockets and roman candles and headed over to my friends house where his cousin had came from PA along with $100 worth of safe and sane items. We ended up having a pretty good time there lighting off smaller items like bottle rockets, 16's of firecrackers, waterproof firecrackers in his pond, and fountains. Around 6 pm I joined my aunt and uncle on their boat to watch the largest pro show in NJ(in Red Bank done by Grucci). I was very tempted to get my stash when I could see at least 10 houses on the river shooting fireworks. The professional show was decent, but they really don't do it for me. On the way back I saw and heard many more fireworks which only led me to be more excited for the 4th. After getting back to town I met up with the same friend I hung out with earlier and lit off some crackling balls and firecrackers. Around 12 we decided to call it a night and light a 350 string of lady fingers before I went home. I was pretty surprised that despite how loud it was and being in a NJ neighborhood that no one called the cops. When I got home there was no one home so I decided to go down to a parking lot at the end of my street and light off a 100 shot saturn missile. I put a nice long fuse on it, lit it, and ran. By the time I had gotten home it was still going and I was just catching the tail end of the police report on my police scanner saying where it had been lit. I don't even think they stopped at the location as I didn't hear anything else about it on the scanner. 
 On to the 4th. On the 4th I got up around 11 and gave some fireworks to a friend, then met up with my one friend whos house I was going to shoot at. I met up with him around 12 and brought over all of my stash and boards which was pretty hard to do since I had to stick it all in the back of my M3. 
 My friends place is on a river and there is a pro show right across the river in the next town, so nearly everyone on the street has a party. When I began unloading the boxes his neighbor was really excited to see what I had this year. To start everything off we tested a couple of shells and then lit some rockets, 40" parachutes and other daytime items. His mom asked us to keep it quiet for a while since there were quite a few older people at the party. We took a break for a while and got some lunch before coming back. We killed some time by setting up some of the hdpe tubes in the sand on his beach and setting up pipes to launch rockets out of. Around 5 or so we began shooting off lots of rockets to kill the time since I had brought a couple gross of bottle rockets, over 100 texas pop rockets, clustering bee, etc, style rockets, a couple packs of bc pound rockets, and about 50 assorted 8oz rkts. This killed lots of time lighting these and just hanging out until around 630 when we started lighting off some shells. We just lit some shells and some rockets until around 8:00 when things started getting good. The pro show was set to go off around 915 so we had a great time until then. We lit off one of my 4 shot mortar racks to start things off which sparked other people in the neighborhood to begin. Across the river we could see about 12 different spots where fireworks were going off. These people had mostly fountains and rockets yet I saw quite a few large shells which had to be class b going off as well. The intensity gradually picked up throughout the neighborhood until it got absolutely insane at 9:00. Everywhere I looked there were tons of fireworks going off and it was great to see this especially in NJ. At this point I was loading shells non stop and lighting one repeater then running 5 feet away and lighting another repeater or tube. This scene was absolute pyro heaven in New Jersey. I couldn't believe how fast I was going through my stash and how no one was bothering us, but rather encouraging us. This year I decided to test out making some boards so I fused together a 100 shot air defense, 2 36 shot happys, a 25 shot saturn missile, 1 1 shot thunder king, and a small 10 shot rock n roll. This board, although small, made tons of noise and got the attention of everyone around. I also made a board with a bunch of 48 shot color pearls and fountains. The kids a house over shooting rockets just stopped and watched as well as my friends who were amazed as over 200 shots went off in such rapid succession. I continued to light off some more cakes and tubes while I had my friends loading shells non stop. This went on until the pro show started and everyone took a break to watch that. I could barely keep my focus and I couldn't wait for it to be over so I could get back to shooting. Right after the display ended I lit a 24 shot Red White and Blue salute which I really liked. 
 This was followed by yet more shells, more #300 tubes, and more small cakes. We kept shooting until we were out of good stuff around 1030. At this point we were at the bottom of my stash so I dug out the remaining gross or so of bottle rockets and other assorted rockets and fountains and went to work. A group of about 6 of us just sat on my friends dock lighting these misc. items until around 12 when we were all out. As we were doing this, there were still quite a few people across the river still lighting there remaining rockets and fountains. When all was said and done, we had lit off over $500 worth of fireworks including over 100 shells, around 40 or so small - 200g cakes, hundreds and hundreds of rockets, thousands of firecrackers, about 10 tubes, and many more items leaving me with a couple tanks and some 100's of thunderbombs left in the box. I have truly never experienced this type of "warzone" effect that happened for around 30 minutes before and after the professional show. After we were done I got tons of compliments from all of my friends saying that they would chip in money for me next year and saying how amazing everything was. Just like that the 4th was over and we piled up all the garbage and filled up 4 garbage bags. 
 I thought all of the fireworks fun was over for the year, yet a friend of mine had an 18th birthday party at his house on the 5th and brought out a couple of rockets and small things. Everyone kept begging at me to go home and get some more fireworks. I remembered that I had 1 kit of small festival balls left at my house so I had a friend take me back to get them. Although very cheap and generic, this was my first time using these shells and I was impressed at how good they were considering the price I paid of $5. I was surprised when even girls came up to me saying how much they loved the fireworks. 
 
 Now I'm more excited than ever for next year having had some great fireworks and no dealings with the cops. I plan to get a couple 20 shot mortar racks and some faster fuse for next 4th. I'm also hoping to spend around 1000 bucks next year as compared to 500 this year which will definitely include some 500 grams and Excal's. 

 I hope everyone had an amazing 4th and I look forward to reading about them!

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After Last Year and being visited 4X by the police before they shut me down, anything is an improvement. The benefit is that I still had quite a signifigant stash left over. The down side to this year is that I did not have the opportunity to do any shopping due to a herniated disc that happened last september. To make things worse, i was not able to get in for surgery until the 27Th of June. So I was limited in both shopping and show size. Started out to be a nice day but as evening approached it began to rain on and off. About 45 minutes before the municipal display (I am one block from the park and my back yard faces it so we get aÊhell of a show), it began to rain and they kicked off the show early. The show went for a good hour, they made it longer and bigger than last year, and they were double and triple firing because of the rain. They got most of their show off despite the rain.
 
Well my festivities started with a malfunction. I lit a double lantern salute that thought it would be a good idea to explode in the tube, and it was next to the empty racket ball cannister with change in it to use to silence the dogs, i am still picking up change in the yard.
 
Now I hate to admit it, but the Beihai Crackling Artillery Shells are awesome for the money. My show started with a box of those and several Great Grizzly 1.5" single shot artillery bursts, intermixed with several more double lantern salutes. Black Cat makes some pretty cool 200g cakes, THE BANNER STILL WAVES is pretty awesome! Out of sight suprisingly SUCKS! Several Ring Rockets and various effect black cat rockets, great grizzly whistlers, and Black Cat Smoking Dragons later and we pulled out the Black Cat Magnum and Palm artillery shells. I completely forgot about the Rambo Kids in the garage. A few Noisy Shells and Silver Salutes mixed in!
 
Now i pulled out a coulpe of Peacock Standard 200g cakes and was very very dissapointed. Went back to the Black Cat and Brothers 200g cakes. Had to rush through these this year as the rain was on and off (more on) and the propane torch got too wet and would not light. Carried on from about 7pm to about 10:30. Finished up with a Black Cat Blue on Blue and MINESWEEPER 500g cake. Had the constraints of a sleeping baby and wife, rain and pain so wrapped it up earlier than I usually would.
 
Cakes that stand out from this year are....
 
Black Cat Atom Splitter
Black Cat The Banner Still Waves, This was an AWESOME cake, hard breaks, vivid colors, only available at selected retailers but well worth going out of your way for. Black Cat Blue On Blue
Brothers Red White And Blue Salute
Brothers Fishbowl Commotion
 
Artillery Shells...
 
Of course the Noisy Shell
Black Cat Magnum's (simply awesome, a yearly favorite) Black Cat Palm's
Behai crackling artillery shell
 
ALL of the above are on the shopping list for next year as well as several black cattle/red bull items.
 
Colorful Whirlwind 9 shot is also on the list.
 
I am down to (4) 35 gallon rubbermaid containers chocked full of fireworks and have started the countdown for next year!
 
Oh by the way, can anyone recommend a quality daytime artillery shell? Black Cat had one a few years back but they discontinued it, apparently they had some quality issues with it? Anyone know of a "good" one? 

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Well let me start off by saying I live in NJ and fireworks are illegal !!?! And yes for the first time in 9 years the cops paid a visit to my house (last year) and shut my show down! yes! it sucked but I wasn't going to let it ruin my fun this year,Êmy friends said they would take up a collection to bail me out, if it came down to it! Well, my show went on without any unsuspected visitors andÊeveryone thought it was great!
 Having some 500 gram cakes left over from lastÊyear, this brought my total to (21)ÊÊthis year not to mention the (15) or so 200 gram cakesÊand the (36) 1 3/4" mortar shells and yes I had a bunch of fountains too! Ok, I went a little nuts this year! ÊSpent about 2 hours cleaning up the debris in my neighbors yards the next day, hopefully the paperÊon their roofs willÊblow off before they notice!ÊMost everyone in my neighborhood has 1/2 acre lots butÊI had no control over the wind, which seemed to be carrying everything into my backyard neighbors property. No complaints though! "Whew"...
 ÊÊMost of the highlights this year were the 500 gram cakes. Wow! have consumer fireworks come a long way over the years! Many people leave my house each year saying my show was better than their Townships professional displays. SomeÊof my favorites this year were- What A View,Êa 220 shooter fromÊ(ForwardÊFireworks), Tropical Rainforest (Forward Fireworks),Êcool crackling flower effect! (2) Turkey Shoot (Brothers) awesome comets! looked like the Space Shuttle was taking off in my backyard! (2)King Of Kings (Brothers) progressive cakes with an awesome willow finale, Kiss The Sky(Kellners) 30 long lastingÊbrocade shots in about 20 seconds!Ê(2)Pyro Alchemy (Shogun) the best multi-effect cakeÊI have seen, with a great finale.ÊÊ
 ÊÊI had 2Ê"so called" grand finale'sÊthe first consisted of 3ÊLunarÊStrobe's (Kellners)Êand 3 White Sands Missile Range (Kellners) both cakes have similar effects (splitting comets) andÊcomplimented each other perfectly. This was Awesome! The end of my show consisted (3) Uncle Sams Answer (Brothers) Great breaks, but kind of repetitive and (2) Big and Bold (Brothers) absolutely awesome ending breaks that rival 3+ inch shells...Good Ending! Thanks for the reviews Bob, they helped me put together my show! Can't wait till Jan.1st at Midnight! My next pyro adventure!

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Thanks again to everyone who contributed a story this year. Please contribute again in July 2006.

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

Happy shooting,
Bob Weaver

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