Thanksgiving Eve fireworks for Phillipsburg NJ football team pep rally

[Engineer Cat]

https://youtu.be/-a4x3K55ueg?si=inoQTbVRm1-l-Voo

[displayfireworks1]

What else can you tell us? Did you work this display? See how they did the fireballs at the end , that is how you do it to avoid alarm as opposed to one massive one at the end.

[Engineer Cat]

Hey Dave, yes I was 1 of 4 crew members who setup this shoot. Started setting up at 9am and finishes at 4pm. Shoot time was 6:30pm. Here are some details with the layout and some pictures from the shoot site.

The show was scripted to be 16 mins long and included 80 drones.

26 Positions were shot with the StarFire and using 2 Star Bridges for wireless communications with the StarFire from across the road. Being the baseball field is surrounded by chain-link fence, we had the Star Bridge that was connected to the StarFire at a height of around 15 feet to make sure a Faraday cage wasn't created by accident to prevent poor communications with the 2 Star Bridges we setup in the field.

Product shot was all 1.3:

65 – 1.75in shells
279 – 2.5in shells
29 – 1 rows (slices)
43 – Cakes of various shapes and sizes
20 – Candles bundles (Between 6 and 9 candles per bundle)
17 – Strobe pots / Gerbs
5 – 6in fireball pots
3 – 12in fireball pots
250ish – Candles (Single shot comets)

1 Star Fire Module per position with a 32 MuuxBRD slat at each position.
Position 1 – 11 consist of candle boxes. (Single shot comets).
Positions 12 – 16 consist of :
4 - Candle Bundles per position (20 total) (bundled roman candles)
3 - Strobe pots per position (15 total) Plus 2 “test” gerbs used to make sure the time code is running properly at the start of the show. (These are the first things that fired and are not shown in the video).
5 – 6in fire pots (fireballs)
3 – 12in fire pots in positions 12, 14 & 16
2 – 3in ground bombs in position 13 & 15 (fired when the 12in fire pots were shot)
Positions 17 had, 13 cakes & 9 – 1 rows (slices)
Position 18 had, 17 – Cakes & 11 – 1 rows
Position 19 had, 13 cakes & 9 – 1 rows
Position 20 was the 200 shot finale rack with 2.5in 10 shot chains (Rack has 10 rows of 5 mortars, 4 racks combined pushed up against each other makes the rack 200 shot)
Positions 21 – 23 were 1.75in racks with 68 shells
Positions 24 – 26 were 2.5in racks with 79 shells

This was the first time the drones were used in unison with the fireworks. As you can see some of the timing was a bit off where the drones were moving to a new position which caused dead sky. They will need to work on this so that fireworks are shooting while the drones are moving into their next position.

Field layout
6810

6811
6812
6813

One of the cakes CATOed a shot and blew it out the side.
6814

StarFire

6815

[Engineer Cat]

Fire pot setup

6816
6817

We shoot a 30 gallon 12 inch pot but they didn't want to pay for the additional $100+ in gasoline so we didn't bring it.

[Birdman]

Why didn't you tell me you were shooting here! That's where I graduated High School and is about 10 minutes from my home. I was going to go this year but I was on call for work. If I had known you were on the crew I probably would have went anyway.

[displayfireworks1]

Fire pot setup

6816
6817

We shoot a 30 gallon 12 inch pot but they didn't want to pay for the additional $100+ in gasoline so we didn't bring it.

What format are these attachments ? Can't seem to open them. Can your try again? Same on your other post. Are they pictures?

[Engineer Cat]

Why didn't you tell me you were shooting here! That's where I graduated High School and is about 10 minutes from my home. I was going go this year but I was on call for work. If I had known you were on the crew I probably would have went anyway. Dude sorry Kev, It didn't even pop into my head how close you were to that area.


What format are these attachments ? Can't seem to open them. Can your try again? Same on your other post. Are they pictures?

I though they were jpegs so not sure why they aren't showing up. Lets try it again.

6833
6834

[Birdman]

Dude sorry Kev, It didn't even pop into my head how close you were to that area.

Maybe next year.

For those that are not familiar, this high school football rivalry is a big deal in this area. It's been played for over 100 years. It routinely sells out Fisher Stadium on the lafayette college campus. It's been broadcast on ESPN and was featured as a Gatorade Replay game where they replayed the 1993 game that ended in a tie (my wife's graduating class). The manning brothers were in town to be the coaches for each team:

https://youtu.be/hMAMfMvrOb4?si=nFr07YY83vFhd4z4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMAMfMvrOb4

When I was a kid both teams had massive bonfires on Thanksgiving eve. NJ banned bonfires many years ago. Easton still has theirs in PA but Phillipsburg has been having fireworks instead of a bonfire. BTW..Phillipsburg won this year's game in a blowout. The first time they have won back to back in 20 years. The video does not exaggerate the importance of this game to these communities. Phillipsburg built a new high school a few years ago and that's where the fireworks are now. The old high school I went to is shown in the video.

[Engineer Cat]

I didn't really know much about how long this has been going on until I was talking with people on the shoot site. We could see the glow of the bonfire in the overcast clouds over at Easton while clearing the field in Pburg. Someone sent me this, Pretty crazy how big that fire is. If you zoom in, you can see it' surrounded by people.

6840