2016 backyard shoot random thoughts

[titanspark76]

We did our shoot last night because more family could attend and there was a very small chance of rain forecasted as opposed to the 80% chance today (more on that later) . First of all and most importantly it was a safe shoot. My setup included about 15 500 gram cakes , a few 200 grams, 72 canister mortars and about 10 fountains. Also I bought a cheap 12 cue China firing system (which surprisingly performed flawlessly). My simplistic strategy was to hand fire everything up to my 12 favorite cakes (established by YouTube videos) and then fired them sequentially with the finale being amazing ballet fused to the 3 6 shot racks I posted about before.
Recommendations: Amazing ballet got the biggest reaction followed by High faultin. For a cheap cake Irish legend got a good reaction as well. I'm not a fan of fountains, but cat calls was pretty awesome. Personally I also really enjoyed Pyro candy ( it really filled the sky), but it was clear the audience really enjoyed the higher shot faster paced cakes. Would love to hear what others favorites from their show was, but maybe that should be a thread by itself.
Problems: The fusing to the 6 shot racks for the finale failed. Prior to the show it started pouring the rain and I covered everything with tarps , but the fuse to the racks were not covered well so I assume that was the issue as every other thing I fused went as planned. Also the Hooligans cake was a dud. Only one shot fired. Today I cut a small square next to 2nd tube and spliced in with safety fuse and wrapped several times with duct tape and will try again tonight. Overall not too big of a problem I suppose. Everyone had a good time and I could hear several people around the neighborhood clapping and screaming between shots and even had a couple vehicles pull off the side of the road to watch. Assuming I'm still gainfully employed next year I plan on putting up a better show. I appreciate everything I've learned here from you guys replying to my posts and reading other discussions that were relevant to me. Here's a picture mostly setup

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[K&C Fireworks]

Yeah bud I know the feeling bud I did three shows this week. Saturday nights went good but we didn't take no pics of videos of it wasn't that just had about 20 cakes and 40 60 gram shells in it . Sunday nights show went great we have videos of it . And tonights show went ok I had the Stars assortment that we got from Nite Lites it was great it was my first of two finales I had planned for tonights show . but it started raining and just killed my second finale that I had planned . I'm gonna post pics and videos of later on today . I have them both posted on my facebook page K&C Fireworks. But everyone seemed happy with tonights show . Abd the High Faultin cake is a good . you should try Hit the road jack cake its a good one too.

[cmalloy513]

For me the crowd reacted the most to crackle. Idk why that's the case but they liked it. The favorite cake seemed to be "fighting rooster" by world class followed closely by "fat lady" by winda. I was using the cobra system for the first time and I am nothing short of amazed at its performance. One problem was that I had 2-4 cakes wired to each cue. I will definitely be getting some more modules in the off season. The 18R worked great but I may look to upgrade to the 18R2. My finale was 150 excals all quick fused which went amazing. I got 20+ comments saying that I "brought the sun back." All in all the show was a huge success and nobody got injured.

[ilovecrackle]

For me the crowd reacted the most to crackle..

Yeah, Iv seen the same pattern as well. I did an all crackle false finale a few years back and the crowd seemed to love it more than my actual finale. haha

[apellet]

I love Amazing Ballet! Had that one in my shoot as well. Glad you had fun, aside from the inconveniences :)

[MontanaMike]

This was our second year using the Cobra system, and first year buying wholesale cases. We had about 200 people in the immediate area watching and probably a few hundred more around the vicinity.

Last year we had 3 modules plus the audiobox; this year we added 3 more modules.

Everything went up flawlessly with the exception of four canister shells which lit, but then went out inexplicably. Not a huge deal though. I still don't know why that happened, unless the fuses got damaged somehow.

Our show was all from wfboom.com (42 cases) except for two boxes of canisters (one Excal, one Diablo from Black Cat) and bunch of roman candles which we brought up from Phantom in Cheyenne WY.

We bought 4 of the roman candle racks from Pyroboom and fused the candles all together - one fuse per rack. It was awesome seeing all those go up at the same time. Works just like a repeater cake, for less money! I might think about a couple more of those racks for next year. This year we fused them all with quickfuse but it would be fun to have a couple with regular visco. I did modify the racks a bit -- since there are various diameters of candles, I put in a wider piece of wood at the bottom of the rack, and installed 12, 1" thin-wall PVC pipes in to hold the candles. Then I put in some rubber weatherstripping to keep the pipes from sliding around. Much easier to load the racks and keep the candles facing the right way. The premium candles from Phantom were top notch!

Last year we sprinkled mortars throughout the show and used multiple cakes for the finale, but this year we put almost all the mortars and the end of the show and doubled the amount of mortars we had, and added four spinners, so our finale was pretty jaw dropping compared to all of our previous shows. I was in major "holy shit!!" mode through the whole finale.

It's impossible for me to pick a favorite item because we had several spots with multiple cakes going up, but there were zero disappointments as far as I could tell. Lots of people told us it was the best fireworks show they ever saw; one guy said "That was almost like Disney!" Which I would never even claim to be in the same universe with Disney, but I have to say that having three or four identical cakes going up at the exact same time (thanks to the Cobra) was pretty awesome.

Already planning for next year!

[Rick_In_Tampa]

Sorry to hear your fuse got wet. I had that happen last year. It rained throughout my entire show last year. I had 4 boards of cakes all daisy chained together, and 4 racks of mortars. By time the visco made it's way to board 3, it was beginning to fizzle out. I did a LOT of hand lighting after that. Some cakes were just too wet to light. This year it didn't rain thank God. Still, I had everything taped up tight just in case!

As for favorite cakes... Everyone seemed to love the crackle cakes. I had 5 "glitter and doom" cakes in the pre-finale and they were a big hit. Beyond that, the multi-break fan cakes seemed to be well received. Mardi Gras Fiesta, Fire and Fury, Dark Energy were all great cakes. Buzzards Roost was a small 500G cake that was on steroids! I'm probably going to pick up a few cases of those next year and incorporate them into the finale.

[ilovecrackle]

Buzzards Roost was a small 500G cake that was on steroids! I'm probably going to pick up a few cases of those next year and incorporate them into the finale.

Yeah, I loved Buzzards roost. Was by far my favorite cake of the year.