Engineer Cat
07-05-2022, 06:42 AM
All in all I was very happy with the result of the show. All but 1 16 shot 200g cake and 1 ball shell didn’t fire and apparently a fuse slowed down in one of the cakes as there is a rouge shot after the show ends. I had 2 Firelinx firing modules connected to 48 pins. I counted something like 700 shots in total for the 7 min show. It wasn’t without some issues but nothing that couldn’t be resolved. So here’s what went down.
I had everything wired up by 4:30pm. Did a continuity test on Firelinx Mod 1 and it came back with all positive results. Tested Mod 2 and it showed all 24 pins in the script but was not recognizing a shot loaded (MJG initiator) in any of them. So I start scratching my head because I have been testing this script with both mods A LOT to make sure it would go smooth. I pretty much went through everything possible but could not figure out why I was seeing this. In the Firelinx manual it says when you get an X on a pin when doing a CT test it means “There is no shot loaded, but this channel is currently in the choreography. This should be corrected; a show will still run if it is left disconnected”.
Since I still had a few hours before the show I decided to take a break and go pickup my wife for the party which is only a 10 min ride away. During that trip I called Firelinx even thought I know it was Sunday July 3rd and left a message on their voicemail asking for someone to call me. When I got back to the shoot site I noticed I had a voicemail from Andrea at Firelinx letting me know someone will be calling me. While listening to that message Cory from Firelinx called and I explained to him what I was seeing. After some discussion we figured the system wasn’t reporting those 24 pins correctly doing the CT test but I knew the connections were good and so were the initiators. Cory assured me that if my connections and initiators are good then the show will shoot as scripted. That was all I needed to hear to relax and not continue to think the show was going to be a disaster.
I want to give a big shout out to the crew at Firelinx for calling me back within 15 mins of getting my message and helping me on the busiest weekend for pyros across the USA.
After I hung up with Cory I was feeling good about everything but then we realized we had a new issue to figure out. Since we were planning on floating a dock out in the middle of the river, we had put an anchor downstream the night before and tested letting the dock float out there. The test was good. The dock just weather veined in the tide that was going upstream and didn’t spin at all. NOW we are seeing that the wind was ripping pretty good downstream and now we had an issue with the dock possibly spinning if the wind continued. The boat we used to prep all that is lighter than the dock so we idled to see if the wind would blows us downstream. It was a little but was more like a slack tide effect which also isn’t good for keeping the dock from spinning. So we ended up putting a second anchor upstream and connected the anchors to both up and down stream sides of the dock which worked out fine. But we spent a bit of time doing that and now it’s dark and pretty much right at shoot time.
Due to trying to solve that problem I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of everything setup after I took the tarps off. I only have a picture of the products before we brought them down to the dock earlier in the day. Hopefully someone at some point took that shot and eventually I’ll have it to upload.
Now it’s time to shoot and I use a laptop to play the music as I don’t have that synced up with the Firelinx yet being I’m just using the internal clock for script firing. But it’s easy enough to click play and hit the fire button on the control module at the same time. SOOO I do it and immediately see my laptop take 1 full second before it responds to my click. I have 5 seconds of empty space before the show and know before the first shot fires the entire script is 1 second off time. After the show I told a few people and they laughed at me. Joked that I cared about it being 1 second off. They didn’t know it was… but I did, and so will you even if I didn’t mention that. LOL. I’ll be figuring out SMTP for next year.
Finally I find out that the person who was tasked to film the show from the best vantage point so that all the breaks are in frame, FAILED to even hit the record button on his camera. There were a lot of people filming it but they were all close to the show so there’s a lot that’s not in frame. However between my wife and my sister in law they both got ok video so I edited the better views from their phones to make the video I’m posting. I also setup my camera pointing at the dock so I added that video to the lower corner as well. I really like the Firelinx illumination telling you what mode it’s in. Watching it change from green (safe) to red (armed) is pretty satisfying to see just before the show starts. I also heard a few people mention that “those things turned red so I think the show is starting”.
I also want to give a shout out to everyone here on pyrotalk that takes the time to read and comment on each other’s posts. It really does help a lot to have a community to discuss all things pyro and to be able to find answers and support from pyro peers.
2, 12 shot racks are not in this picture.
6348
https://vimeo.com/726968573
I had everything wired up by 4:30pm. Did a continuity test on Firelinx Mod 1 and it came back with all positive results. Tested Mod 2 and it showed all 24 pins in the script but was not recognizing a shot loaded (MJG initiator) in any of them. So I start scratching my head because I have been testing this script with both mods A LOT to make sure it would go smooth. I pretty much went through everything possible but could not figure out why I was seeing this. In the Firelinx manual it says when you get an X on a pin when doing a CT test it means “There is no shot loaded, but this channel is currently in the choreography. This should be corrected; a show will still run if it is left disconnected”.
Since I still had a few hours before the show I decided to take a break and go pickup my wife for the party which is only a 10 min ride away. During that trip I called Firelinx even thought I know it was Sunday July 3rd and left a message on their voicemail asking for someone to call me. When I got back to the shoot site I noticed I had a voicemail from Andrea at Firelinx letting me know someone will be calling me. While listening to that message Cory from Firelinx called and I explained to him what I was seeing. After some discussion we figured the system wasn’t reporting those 24 pins correctly doing the CT test but I knew the connections were good and so were the initiators. Cory assured me that if my connections and initiators are good then the show will shoot as scripted. That was all I needed to hear to relax and not continue to think the show was going to be a disaster.
I want to give a big shout out to the crew at Firelinx for calling me back within 15 mins of getting my message and helping me on the busiest weekend for pyros across the USA.
After I hung up with Cory I was feeling good about everything but then we realized we had a new issue to figure out. Since we were planning on floating a dock out in the middle of the river, we had put an anchor downstream the night before and tested letting the dock float out there. The test was good. The dock just weather veined in the tide that was going upstream and didn’t spin at all. NOW we are seeing that the wind was ripping pretty good downstream and now we had an issue with the dock possibly spinning if the wind continued. The boat we used to prep all that is lighter than the dock so we idled to see if the wind would blows us downstream. It was a little but was more like a slack tide effect which also isn’t good for keeping the dock from spinning. So we ended up putting a second anchor upstream and connected the anchors to both up and down stream sides of the dock which worked out fine. But we spent a bit of time doing that and now it’s dark and pretty much right at shoot time.
Due to trying to solve that problem I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of everything setup after I took the tarps off. I only have a picture of the products before we brought them down to the dock earlier in the day. Hopefully someone at some point took that shot and eventually I’ll have it to upload.
Now it’s time to shoot and I use a laptop to play the music as I don’t have that synced up with the Firelinx yet being I’m just using the internal clock for script firing. But it’s easy enough to click play and hit the fire button on the control module at the same time. SOOO I do it and immediately see my laptop take 1 full second before it responds to my click. I have 5 seconds of empty space before the show and know before the first shot fires the entire script is 1 second off time. After the show I told a few people and they laughed at me. Joked that I cared about it being 1 second off. They didn’t know it was… but I did, and so will you even if I didn’t mention that. LOL. I’ll be figuring out SMTP for next year.
Finally I find out that the person who was tasked to film the show from the best vantage point so that all the breaks are in frame, FAILED to even hit the record button on his camera. There were a lot of people filming it but they were all close to the show so there’s a lot that’s not in frame. However between my wife and my sister in law they both got ok video so I edited the better views from their phones to make the video I’m posting. I also setup my camera pointing at the dock so I added that video to the lower corner as well. I really like the Firelinx illumination telling you what mode it’s in. Watching it change from green (safe) to red (armed) is pretty satisfying to see just before the show starts. I also heard a few people mention that “those things turned red so I think the show is starting”.
I also want to give a shout out to everyone here on pyrotalk that takes the time to read and comment on each other’s posts. It really does help a lot to have a community to discuss all things pyro and to be able to find answers and support from pyro peers.
2, 12 shot racks are not in this picture.
6348
https://vimeo.com/726968573