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View Full Version : Tales from an epic fail of a pyromusical test



Jay_
05-20-2018, 01:00 AM
Over the week I put together a 2:15 pyro musical with just 18 cues as well as 12 from a Chinese system so I could get a feel for how everything worked. We had some weather today and I had decided that we would not shoot until the last minute and I changed my mind as the skies cleared. Knowing that everything would be wet at my shoot site, I thought that it would be a prime opportunity to shoot without having to worry about catching the whole world on fire.

So get everything loaded quickly and head out. Its a 20 mile trip to my shoot site and we didn't leave until about 7:20.

Arrive at shoot site around 8pm and unload everything. Start connecting wires about 8:15

Get wiring done up to cue 16, sparse sprinkles turn into a downpour.

Rush to get the final cues hooked up, and then wire up a few on Chinese system while the downpour continues.

Test continuity....looks good on all 18 cobra cues. Place empty plastic tub over cobra module. Noting to cover Chinese cues with.

Quickly throw stuff in back of truck that has to be loaded before firing. While loading Cue 1 goes off on Chinese system. Its a canister shell and luckily nobody is in the way of it. I guess the rain got to it.

Drive truck down and park. We are too close to the fireworks for a good view...but I get Bluetooth speaker out while wife gets video camera out.

Still pouring rain..

Scramble to get Bluetooth speaker connected to phone. Phone says its connected so its time to initialize everything and get ready to hit button 1 on my control.

Hit button 1 and start song together. Phone not synced to speaker...getting sound only from phone...script running.

Scream obscenities, throw phone on ground in a rage (soft ground..phone uninjured)

Script firing on remote but nothing is happening.

Still pouring rain.

Stop script on remote. Its not firing.

After trying several different things, walk up to module. Discover that module is still in test mode :).

Put module in arm mode. At this point the rain is so heavy my fireworks are just getting soaked and I am doubting that any of them will fire.

Start script again, didn't bother with the music this time. Just want to get some good video footage and see how my timing is.

Lost continuity on 3 cues. Just so happens that the cues that I lost were the body of my show and made up over a minute of my 2:15 show.

Perfect fuse on mortar rack must be soaked. My quickmatch went off, but it just sparked a couple of times and never burned. Dead mortar rack.

So at least I got some video right? I came home to view the video, and what video that we did get of fireworks is obstructed by a big raindrop on the lens of the camera. You can see what is going on, but any event that took place in the middle of the shot is completely blurry.

In the end I had 4 (out of 7) cakes, 2 mortar racks, 4 62mm shells, and 1 comet that didn't fire.

Fail.

Anyway...that's my day. How was yours?

PyroManiacs
05-20-2018, 01:39 AM
Please post this video...need to see it for myself.

Jay_
05-20-2018, 02:20 AM
https://youtu.be/5_ZMvUWxjdE

https://youtu.be/5_ZMvUWxjdE

Here you go. This was started a bit after I started firing. The other video that I have is just black screen with me raging and yelling profanities a couple of times. I figured should probably leave that one out :).

Would have been a lot more in the sky if the rest of my junk had went up.

cherrybomb1
05-20-2018, 03:28 AM
https://youtu.be/5_ZMvUWxjdE

https://youtu.be/5_ZMvUWxjdE

Here you go. This was started a bit after I started firing. The other video that I have is just black screen with me raging and yelling profanities a couple of times. I figured should probably leave that one out :).

Would have been a lot more in the sky if the rest of my junk had went up.

Lol...i thought shit like that only happened to me..i swear I saw ghost and poltergeist in there somewhere.It can only get better!

PyroManiacs
05-20-2018, 11:32 AM
Yea, that is a tough loss!

PyroJoeNEPA
05-20-2018, 12:25 PM
Welcome to the "we can't control the weather" world of pyro. Imagine if it was 700-800 3" & 4" shells! Don't let it get you down. We all have had horror stories like this. Use it as your "bottom line" to build your successful shoots on--and you will be saying-see, it wasn'r as bad as that time-------. Hang in there Jay!

Jay_
05-20-2018, 02:00 PM
Haha! Thanks guys. I’m not discouraged at all. I figured some of you if not most could relate, so I figured that I would share so others could get a chuckle.

It was very little money spent, and I did get to see some stuff go up. If anything, it gives me an excuse to go out and do some more testing to get my timing right.

I’ll be ordering some more modules this week, so the next time I shoot there will be even more to test.

Mattp
05-20-2018, 10:37 PM
Deucedropper. Huh?? .. lol.. fireworks shooting through a raindrop is one of the coolest things ive ever seen.. almost looks like a fishbowl lense!!! And yeah.. exactly.. just a practice run.. that why its good to do them!!

Rick_In_Tampa
05-21-2018, 07:43 PM
OMG... Thank you for the laugh!! I really needed it. As I was reading your post, I could actually see you running around in the rain trying to get thing in the air. I think we've all been there before. Back when I was using board and long runs of visco, I had a show almost rained out because everything got wet.

As a suggestion if I may.... Once you have your cakes e-matched, put them in garbage bags. You can also put the firing mods in garbage bags. The cakes will shoot right through the bags and they will burn up. So there's no big mess to clean up. Living down here in the swamp, it's a must!

3 Fingers
05-21-2018, 11:06 PM
Once you have your cakes e-matched, put them in garbage bags.

Hey Rick! So on the garbage bag thing...does that mean you are not gluing your cakes down to boards?
How are you securing the cakes once bagged?
Thanks!!