My 2022 show with several disappointments

[Jay_]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL1wEgoonKA

Converted everything to slats this year. Miscalculated on the amount of cables that I needed, so of course I came up 4 cables short.

With that being said, my 5 position front became a disappointing 3 position front. I also had 4 racks of comets that I had to turn into 2 racks of comets so I could steal the cables. Those comets were a big element in my first song so it really hurt.

Speaking of comets, I wasnt smart enough to just plug a slat directly into the module and wire off of it so I cobbled up 4 of the right angle 1' cables and stuck them all together so I would have a cable for my (remaining) left side rack. Well of course it lasted about 10 shots and then came apart so I lost angle comets completely on that side.

2nd song...PFX1423 dominator "pro" comets are garbage. They are not instant, rather have a nice 5 second of so delay after touching them off as the quickmatch runs into the standard visco fuse....this is ridiculous. I obviously didn't test any of the candles so I found out the hard way on that. I also had to cut out some PFS040 and 041 ground bursts due to the fire risk at the site.

3rd song...the backbone of the song was a rack of antimatter containment shells launching in rhythm with the "bang bang bang bang" in the chorus of the song. I had mines in there to cover the hammer cocking sound and the breaks were timed with the sound of the cash register opening. I used the refire cue feature in the 6.04 firmware and 4 sequencers to try to pull this off. I tested it before hand and it worked brilliantly. Well for whatever reason, it didn't work worth a damn in the show. It actually hit like planned about 4 or 5 volleys through the entire song. Was very bummed out about that.

4th (finale) song. Had 5 666 shot roman candles that were supposed to cover the opening of the song. Every one of the MJG's fired but zero of the GD candles lit resulting in a nice little black sky session for several seconds.

Most of my cake boards caught on fire due to me getting shorted on MJG's and having to pack the cakes together so I could use short igniters.

There were plenty of other problems, but ill wait until I have a couple of drinks and chill out before I go into more detail.

[Engineer Cat]

I'm not into hardcore but I'm only 2 mins in and I love it.

[Engineer Cat]

We are so hard on ourselves because we know every little thing that didn't go right because we put so much time and effort into our shows.

Even thought I knew all the parts you were disappointed with, I wasn't disappointed at all. As much as those failed cues would of emphasized key parts of the music, they were not missed. There were plenty of other shots being fired that covered for it.

You did a spectacular job. You had music for everyone in there. I'm not into country music but I have many friends that are and that last song was great. I would surprise them big time if I added a song like that next year. I might have to do that.

[Mattp]

So what your saying is everything went as normal,,, HAHAHA!!! If you didn’t write any of that,, I wouldn’t have known anything wasn’t right,, looked great!!! Really like the sound setup too,, yeah,, longer mjg’s we’re a little difficult to get this year for me too ,, and I pretty much always have a cake board fire,,, I keep a few water buckets and fire extinguishers right outside the shoot site for quick putting out

[randomrobot]

That was awesome. I need someone to link some threads on how you guys actually do this. I don't understand how you have control over every single shot like that when I see the setup being cakes. How?

Anyways, Great show!

[jtfannin]

So what your saying is everything went as normal,,, HAHAHA!!! If you didn’t write any of that,, I wouldn’t have known anything wasn’t right,, looked great!!! Really like the sound setup too,, yeah,, longer mjg’s we’re a little difficult to get this year for me too ,, and I pretty much always have a cake board fire,,, I keep a few water buckets and fire extinguishers right outside the shoot site for quick putting out

I have to agree it’s hard to tell what all didn’t happen when you don’t know the script. The audience never cares.

[Arles]

Great show, stealing Made in America for next year!

[Jay_]

I really appreciate the comments/compliments fellas. I was and still am super disappointed in the cable situation. The comets would have been really cool in the first song shooting doubles from each side. Also, was really let down on the 3rd song...I thought that it would be my best one but with the mortars failing to fire as scripted it was not even really a pyromusical song...rather just fireworks with music.

Not having a 5 position front really sucked too. Had some cool angle comet stuff set up for some moments in the first song, however had to replace them last minute when I realized that I could not even do a 4 position without it looking stupid...so just settled on the 3 position.

Another thing that I dont like is the 7 shot gold lace slices...I fired them every time he said "Made in America" however you cant even really see them go off on the vid and really didn't notice them live.

You cant really see it on the vid, but we had fires popping up everywhere. Not just the cake fires, grass fires and a tree fire. I had 4 different alternate cakes scripted that I could have shot during the dark sky moment, but I had left my remote laying in my lawn chair and I was up putting out a grass fire 100 yds away when it happened. Just a disaster.

[Jay_]

I'm not into hardcore but I'm only 2 mins in and I love it.

Thanks, I actually took 3 tries at scripting the show. I ended up scrapping all of the songs that I had originally picked out and put this mess together.

I was struggling to come up with an intro, so I had a WWPDD (what would Pyro Dan do) moment and decided to just rip it from the start. Scared the shit out of everybody, I couldn't quit laughing.

[Birdman]

Awesome show even though it wasn't what you had envisioned.

[Jay_]

Thanks brother, appreciate it

[Arles]

I’ve shot hundreds of dominator comets and slices and have never seen a delay.

[R. Derrick]

Enjoyed the show! Yours turned out much better than mine! :D As the other poster said, we are hard on ourselves and when our vision isn't matched by our reality, it's hard to accept praise - at least it is for me lol but your show was really good!

[Jay_]

I’ve shot hundreds of dominator comets and slices and have never seen a delay.

Same here. I really like the velocity on the dom comets. If I do a show next year I plan to use mostly spirit or Vulcan products, but still have to get ahold of some dominator comets. That being said, due to my cable issue i still have about 2.5 cases of comets left, so that should get me part of the way there.

[Birdman]

2nd song...PFX1423 dominator "pro" comets are garbage. They are not instant, rather have a nice 5 second of so delay after touching them off as the quickmatch runs into the standard visco fuse....this is ridiculous.

I used those last year and was disappointed in them too. I anticipated a slight delay because they are candles and it can take a few seconds for the first stars to fire but just thought the overall performance not what I would expect from a "pro" product. I'd just assume go with a consumer candle barrage, which is what I did this year. They are also so smoky it mostly hides the effects. I wish I would have commented more on these last year so you and others would have had some insight into my experience with them. But yeah....my first thought as they fired in my show last year was.....don't think I'll be getting them again.

[Arles]

Same here. I really like the velocity on the dom comets. If I do a show next year I plan to use mostly spirit or Vulcan products, but still have to get ahold of some dominator comets. That being said, due to my cable issue i still have about 2.5 cases of comets left, so that should get me part of the way there.

Now that I think of it, the Dominator 1.4 pro roman candles I've fired had a pretty good delay that gave me an 'Oh sh**!!' moment when I used them to start off a show set to music and was staring at dark sky for what felt like an eternity until they started producing.

[Jay_]

I had one of the candles that failed, and that is when I discovered that the quick match just runs into the visco fuse on the candles. When the show was going off, I had just assumed that I had another problem with connection, but discovered the truth the next day.

For the price you give they are a ripoff. I want to say it was like $70+ for a 6/1. When I ordered, I don’t recall looking at the quant in the case…just assumed it was a 12/1 or 18/1. That ended up not being the deal.

[Jay_]

Enjoyed the show! Yours turned out much better than mine! :D As the other poster said, we are hard on ourselves and when our vision isn't matched by our reality, it's hard to accept praise - at least it is for me lol but your show was really good!

I appreciate it man, thank you. I tried to look up your show but I didn’t see a thread on it. It would be awesome if we had a dedicated “fireworks shows” topic to post in. I love to watch everyone’s work, just having trouble finding them all.

[Birdman]

It would be awesome if we had a dedicated “fireworks shows” topic to post in. I love to watch everyone’s work, just having trouble finding them all.

I was thinking the same thing!

[Rick_In_Tampa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL1wEgoonKA

2nd song...PFX1423 dominator "pro" comets are garbage. They are not instant, rather have a nice 5 second of so delay after touching them off as the quickmatch runs into the standard visco fuse....this is ridiculous.

I didn't have any Dominator comets this year, but normally the Dominator cakes I use have a piece of visco that you can light, but they also have an initiator port connected to some quickmatch. Did your comets not have the port? You seem to indicate that the visco ran into the quickmatch, so you had a 5 sec delay because you lit the visco and not the quickmatch. Is that correct? If so, just curious why you didn't put the initiator directly into the quickmatch to make it an instant ignition situation?

[Jay_]

I didn't have any Dominator comets this year, but normally the Dominator cakes I use have a piece of visco that you can light, but they also have an initiator port connected to some quickmatch. Did your comets not have the port? You seem to indicate that the visco ran into the quickmatch, so you had a 5 sec delay because you lit the visco and not the quickmatch. Is that correct? If so, just curious why you didn't put the initiator directly into the quickmatch to make it an instant ignition situation?

Rick it was the PFX1423 roman candles and it was the reverse. There was a T-port with quickmatch on the top of the candle. So when I saw the port on a 1.4 pro product, I put my MJG in the T port and assumed instant ignition...like is the case with 99.9% of the other 1.4 pro that I have ever shot.

The quickmatch just runs into the visco on the roman candles. I looked at one that failed the morning after, and I could not believe that it was rigged that way. Its literally just a bundle of like 4 or 5 standard consumer candles with the standard visco coming out of the top of them, then with the visco just shoved up in the bottom of the quickmatch.

So best case, you are going to have at least a 5 second or so delay when the igniter goes off. If I hadn't seen the one that failed to fire, I never would have known.

I did have 2 of the 76 proline candles (from 2018) that I shot in the show. I know that you are probably familiar with them, but they are the ones with the slurry in the top of them. I just taped and ematch on top of the slurry and they cracked off near instantly and have beautiful colors.

[Rick_In_Tampa]

Yikes. Okay. That makes more sense now. Sorry to hear that happened to you. I used some 76 candles in my show last year to open with, but I used talons on the visco to light them and of course, there was a delay. Never used Dominator candles, and it doesn't sound like I'm ever going to.

[Jay_]

Yikes. Okay. That makes more sense now. Sorry to hear that happened to you. I used some 76 candles in my show last year to open with, but I used talons on the visco to light them and of course, there was a delay. Never used Dominator candles, and it doesn't sound like I'm ever going to.

Yeah the dom candles are junk.

I do like the so76 candles a lot. I get near instant ignition with them when I tape an ematch to the slurry in the middle of the bundle. The only ones that I have used are the RWB candles and the colors are bright and very well defined on them. Good stuff.

[Rick_In_Tampa]

Yeah the dom candles are junk.

I do like the so76 candles a lot. I get near instant ignition with them when I tape an ematch to the slurry in the middle of the bundle. The only ones that I have used are the RWB candles and the colors are bright and very well defined on them. Good stuff.

Totally agree. I bought a mess of those a number of years ago to do a R/W/B "wall of color" but that's the year we had a 6hr rain delay and I couldn't wire them. Still have most of them in my garage. Somewhere. :(

[Jay_]

So I did a little autopsy today and discovered why my sequencers didn't fire as planned in step mode. I had a bad lipo charger that would give a false "full" charge status for one reason of the other. Anyway, I pulled the battery out of one that had been charged with a good charger and it still read 15.9 volts. The batteries in channel 3 and channel 6 modules that fired the sequencer showed 12.1 and 12.4 volts on the amp meter. That would explain why everything else off of the modules went up, but with the short increments between fires going into the sequencers, the half dead batteries did not have time to recover.

The real tragedy is that I had a 24v external power setup completely rigged and ready to go, but after cablegate and me having to shrink my front from 5 positions over 280ft to just 3 positions over about 140ft I decided that it was not necessary so I didn't drag it out. What a great decision.

[Rick_In_Tampa]

Wow. That REALLY sucks. Sorry to hear that. But.. It's good that you did the autopsy to figure out what the core issue was so you won't have a repeat issue next year.

[PYRODAN]

Thanks, I actually took 3 tries at scripting the show. I ended up scrapping all of the songs that I had originally picked out and put this mess together.

I was struggling to come up with an intro, so I had a WWPDD (what would Pyro Dan do) moment and decided to just rip it from the start. Scared the shit out of everybody, I couldn't quit laughing.

LOL! I am honored. I have my own acronym now!

[PYRODAN]

63646365
6366

These are the comets I use and the way they are wired. Or how I do it anyway. You can read the part number on the comet.

[Rick_In_Tampa]

Yeah those staples are finger shedders if you're not careful.

[PYRODAN]

63646365
6366

These are the comets I use and the way they are wired. Or how I do it anyway. You can read the part number on the comet.

POOP! I just noticed, the tubes I am holding are Dominator 62mm pre-loads. Not comets. But they are configured the same way so it still applies.

[Jay_]

LOL! I am honored. I have my own acronym now!

Now added to my signature for eternity. Its like getting your bronze bust in the pyro hall of fame.

[Jay_]

Wow. That REALLY sucks. Sorry to hear that. But.. It's good that you did the autopsy to figure out what the core issue was so you won't have a repeat issue next year.

Yeah, I couldn't leave it alone...had to know why they tested spot on, but didn't perform when they needed to. I still have 4 9v modules that I haven't converted to lipo yet and the couple of times I tested it that's what I used because I assumed that if there was going to be a trigger problem, I would find it on what I thought would be the "weaker" power supply. A day or two before the 4th, I re-channeled all of my 18's dedicating lipo mods to trigger the sequencers.