New to Cobra... What else do I need to do?

[BeerGuyEd]

Well, earlier this week I was a little worried about my firing system firing everything, which got me thinking about buying a Cobra. Once I figured out my little 36 cue show was going to need over 800 ft of scab wire ran to wire it up on the 4th, I made the decision to get bit. Now thanks to the awesome people at Cobra I have just received a 18R2, and a 36M with 3 36 cue mini slats (series). Now I asked for some advice in the Cobra Facebook group and several people said it was too steep a learning curve to use the Cobra this close to the 4th. I don't disagree since I will not have a lot of time to play with it before the show, but thus far I also do not think I will have any issues. Which brings me to the topic.

So far I have:

Created my show script in Cobra Show Creator. Exported it to .csv and loaded it on a flash drive
Charged my 36M and sync'ed the 36M to the 18R2.
Loaded the script on the 18R2
Dry run the script on the 18R2 which appeared to work perfectly.

I will:

Wire jumpers on all my empty cues on the series slats (my show is too small so every cue on every slat is not used).
Place a shunt on the final slat in the chain
Test continuity after everything is wired up on the 4th.
Arm and shoot the show

This all seems to be too easy. I know I could do a million more complicated things with the system, but what am I missing that I should do to make sure the show goes off without a hitch?

Thanks in advance,

Ed

[Jay_]

As far as the equipment, practice with it. Dry run it several times to get accustomed to the controls. After using my system many times over 3 years, i still fire it up and practice.

In show creator...check, check, and recheck all of your events. Tweak the times if necessary, watch out for times during the show in which you will have dark sky. If you don't have the web based cobra show creator beta, you should get it. It is way better and more user friendly than the old CSC.

If you have an audiobox, ABSOLUTLEY check, check, and recheck to make sure that it is jiving with your script and you do not have any audio issues. It only likes to be talked to a certain way, and will drive you insane with problems if you do not have your stuff together on it.

Prewire and prework everything you possibly can. I know that 36 cues may not sound like much to you, but it will still take a while to set up depending on what all effects you are shooting (especially if you are shooting pairs of cakes/effects in different positions). I remember my first cobra show when I just had 72 cues. I way underestimated the setup time, and ended up spending 15 hours setting up my show. I had done quite a bit of pre-work, but was ill prepared. If i had taken the time to add my scab wire to the cakes, it would have knocked several hours off my setup.

Also....don't panic\go into a rage when you hit the auto fire button and nothing happens. You probably just forgot to arm the system. Don't ask me how i know that :)

good luck with it Ed!

[BeerGuyEd]

As far as the equipment, practice with it. Dry run it several times to get accustomed to the controls. After using my system many times over 3 years, i still fire it up and practice.

In show creator...check, check, and recheck all of your events. Tweak the times if necessary, watch out for times during the show in which you will have dark sky. If you don't have the web based cobra show creator beta, you should get it. It is way better and more user friendly than the old CSC.

If you have an audiobox, ABSOLUTLEY check, check, and recheck to make sure that it is jiving with your script and you do not have any audio issues. It only likes to be talked to a certain way, and will drive you insane with problems if you do not have your stuff together on it.

Prewire and prework everything you possibly can. I know that 36 cues may not sound like much to you, but it will still take a while to set up depending on what all effects you are shooting (especially if you are shooting pairs of cakes/effects in different positions). I remember my first cobra show when I just had 72 cues. I way underestimated the setup time, and ended up spending 15 hours setting up my show. I had done quite a bit of pre-work, but was ill prepared. If i had taken the time to add my scab wire to the cakes, it would have knocked several hours off my setup.

Also....don't panic\go into a rage when you hit the auto fire button and nothing happens. You probably just forgot to arm the system. Don't ask me how i know that :)

good luck with it Ed!

I plan on practicing with the system as much as possible between now and the 4th.

I did use the web version of CSC and found it easy to use. Does the program tell you when you have black sky? I did not get into it deeply. Just basically added my fireworks and started duplicating my spreadsheet.

I still have a lot of work to do before the show happens but I am well on my way. I can pre-wire nearly half the show with the slats. No audio box yet but that will be next year. I do need to make about 40 jumpers tonight. The Cobra setup is much easier than what I was looking at with would have taken many hours.

I will add the place system in armed mode to the checklist.

[Robbro097]

Make sure you have mods set to proper ematch/talons. Looks like u pretty well got it under control with the advice above. If u do run into black sky in your show the step button will fire the next cue in your script. And def remember the arm button lol