Field setup advice,please

[Mississippipyro]

Hello fellow pyros-
I'm looking for planning and pre day of setup advice, keeping with the theme of "make things easy on your future self". What does everyone do to making things a little less stressful on show day and how far in advance do you do particular steps of your setup work?
Specifically:
1. How far ahead of time do you poke and pre wire cakes?

I most likely will have limited help the day of the show and all will not be experienced pyros.

So you understand the scope of the show, and are hopefully able to provide a good estimate for how much time I will need I will share some details below:

My show will have:
100 500g cakes
60 200g cakes (most on boards with multiples)
12 slices
20 mines
15 large Roman candles
200 consumer shells

I will be using two 72m Cobra mods

Any help would be appreciated

[Icooclast]

Hello fellow pyros-
I'm looking for planning and pre day of setup advice, keeping with the theme of "make things easy on your future self". What does everyone do to making things a little less stressful on show day and how far in advance do you do particular steps of your setup work?
Specifically:
1. How far ahead of time do you poke and pre wire cakes?

I most likely will have limited help the day of the show and all will not be experienced pyros.

So you understand the scope of the show, and are hopefully able to provide a good estimate for how much time I will need I will share some details below:

My show will have:
100 500g cakes
60 200g cakes (most on boards with multiples)
12 slices
20 mines
15 large Roman candles
200 consumer shells

I will be using two 72m Cobra mods

Any help would be appreciated

i wish i could help. i am just responding to ask: about how long a show with all that would last? i know it veries by fusing of cakes and such. just asking if you or anyone else can give rough estimate for future use

[AxeElf]

i am just responding to ask: about how long a show with all that would last?

If they all go off at the same time, 60-70 seconds should do it.

If they all go off one at a time, it would take a few hours.

It's an impossible question to answer without knowing the timing.

[PyroJoeNEPA]

There are lots of "pre-show day" things you can do: Depending on how large your show is, how much area it will cover, how many helpers you will have, and the level of experience your helpers have:::::
Make an easy to understand grounds plot of where your pyro positions are and the ques assigned to each spot.
Make copies for everyone working the field and be sure they understand the layout.
Label everything clearly!
Brreak the setup down to areas/zones/modules/--however you want to do it & assign specific parts to specific people.
Mark the grounds ahead of time so everyone knows where everything goes. A handy item for this is the thin wire stakes with the little plastic flag on them used to mark gas lines, water lines, etc. They are cheap and can be found in Lowes, Home Depot, etc. Mark the flags with a sharpie and code it to your plot drawing. SInce you are using two 72's instead of a bunch of 18 cue mods, mark your cake board ID's.
You can fuse & poke as far in advance as you want to. Just remember safety --outside--and always point cakes and other items away from you and your house/garage. Once you poke them, tape them & label them right away.
Try and have all your helpers there well in advance of setup time [VERY good luck with that one!!!-experience talking!!!!} and go over the layout plan with them before they go out in the field.
Keep an eye on the time so you don't get in a last minute time crunch & allow enough time for you to do a walk through and check everyone's work.
I hope this helps & good luck!!!

[Mississippipyro]

i wish i could help. i am just responding to ask: about how long a show with all that would last? i know it veries by fusing of cakes and such. just asking if you or anyone else can give rough estimate for future use

The first two scripting attempts ended at about 27:30

[Robbro097]

Pyrojoe gave a great breakdown id suggest getting some thin garbage bags to put each cake in. There was alot of ppl that lost product due to rain and not something u wanna have to do on shoot day personally i never seem to have as much time as i think i do lol. I like to match everything 1st than bag and label everything. Its been a pretty efficient process for me.

[Mississippipyro]

Thanks for the info. I was one of those that got rained on lol lost 1/3 of the show

[Icooclast]

The first two scripting attempts ended at about 27:30

thanks for the info, and good luck with your show

[Rick_In_Tampa]

A few years back I had the bright idea of building the show at the shoot site the day of, by staking and taping all the effects in place. DON'T EVER DO THAT!!! It was a huge mistake. The 6 hour rain delay didn't help. Last year I went back to building boards. The setup time was 4 hours and it was the best show I've done to date.

So I would highly recommend you build your show out as much as possible ahead of time. Cover your boards in tarps and you'll be good to go. As Joe indicated, you can poke all your cakes and effects as soon as you want. Just make sure you label the end of the wire with the mod and cue it goes into. My last shipment of goodies gets here this week. I'm going to start fusing cakes in a few weeks, and I'll have all my boards built by the middle of June. It will all sit in my garage until the 4th.

I always do a detailed drawing so I know exactly what goes where and what plugs into what. I'll upload this years drawing so you can see what I mean. You can zoom in and see the mod and cue number for each effect. "M1:Q2" for example. It's also a good reference for helpers day of. You can use the MS snipping tool to cut out sections of the drawing to make setup sheets for your helpers.

Hope that helps.

http://www.pyrotalk.com/bulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=4860&stc=1

[esgrillo]

Lots of good info especially from Rick and Joe (Joe definitely knows pyro lol)

I do not use boards. I do however prewire everything possible in my garage. I also set up my shoot site starting 2 days before the 4th. I place raised platforms for all the shoot positions and set towers for special effects (have to raise those a lot due to the grade at my site) on the 2nd. I do the setup on the 3rd. I cover each platform with a tarp and tuck it under the raised platform for when the rain comes as it happens every year. I do not wrap individual cakes. I have all my platforms sitting on wood pallets. My shoot site is a low lying area and one year heavy rain had enough standing water to cause problems with getting the cakes wet from the bottom up so I decided to raise them all up.

I break my set up crew into 3 teams, one for each platform. I have a lead person on each team with the most experience. They all have an "info book" like Rick and Joe mentioned. Mine includes, site layout, general platform layout for cakes and mods, and script. I have found with experience use the longest lead ematches you can get for cakes. It will allow you to minimize moving things around because you wire lead was too short to reach the mod. My platforms are pretty crowded with cakes so this was a problem until MJG came out with the 15 ft leads. If you are using boards this is not a big of a problem I suppose.

Be honest with your helpers, let them know it is going to be a big PIA but there is some satisfaction they can get by seeing the show when it is done and knowing they were part of it. I also provide plenty of water and liquid refreshments, food, and pool breaks.

I was able to set up a 520 cue show in 4 hrs. The biggest key was prewiring everything you can and having a good site map so you know where everything goes and can put it in position one time and never have to move it again. I even prewire my slice racks 100% (had over 200 slices), it took 4 guys to life them but it saved a TON of field time. Slats help with the prewiring but I have also prewired mods in advance that were dedicated to racks. I just sat the mod on the top of the rack to move in to the shoot site and then unstacked at the site. I know your show does not have comet/mine racks but conceptually prewiring is the same regardless.

http://www.pyrotalk.com/bulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=4861&stc=1
http://www.pyrotalk.com/bulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=4862&stc=1

[Mississippipyro]

If they all go off at the same time, 60-70 seconds should do it.

Hopfully not, but it would be a crazy 70sec lol

[Scotty Rockets]

Read what Joe and esgrillo posted, they covered it well. That’s pretty much what I do. Depending on your crew help experience that will determine time and complications during set up. A good crew makes a world of difference setting up a display.

[Mississippipyro]

I only have helpers with no experience, they can unpack the truck and set items in my, Pre-posted locations and that’s about it lol. If everything goes as planned it will all be boarded and I will mostly just need to run wire and test/troubleshoot. If needed I’m building my boards so I can wrap them with plastic if needed. Rain is daily in Mississippi in the summer, Normally about 5-7pm some time lol

[Icooclast]

I only have helpers with no experience, they can unpack the truck and set items in my, Pre-posted locations and that’s about it lol.l

at least they can do that. you wouldn't believe how much time a runner saves you. i used to do dishes and you can get caught up pretty quickly if you have someone unracking and taking them where they go out front... typically in dish washing(no matter where) it's just you vs the world. so, show some love for your runners, lol

[Mississippipyro]

I agree, did my share of dishwashing lol

[Rick_In_Tampa]

I agree, did my share of dishwashing lol

I made my share of dirty dishes. That's why I'm old and fat and don't run anywhere today.

I don't even like driving to work!

Mississippipyro - Build out your boards ahead of time and you'll be fine.

[WithReport]

AS Rick suggested, lots of pre-built boards. I think my last couple shows were pretty well organized and setup went pretty well. here are the field setup diagrams. However this 4th, I plan on more pre-build boards - not just the 200g cakes, but also the 500g cakes.

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4885

[Mississippipyro]

AS Rick suggested, lots of pre-built boards. I think my last couple shows were pretty well organized and setup went pretty well. here are the field setup diagrams. However this 4th, I plan on more pre-build boards - not just the 200g cakes, but also the 500g cakes.

4884


4885
Thanks for the advice, I plan on doing it like you several Pre built boards, racks. What program do you use for your diagrams?

[WithReport]

Thanks for the advice, I plan on doing it like you several Pre built boards, racks. What program do you use for your diagrams?

That was just done with Google Sheets