I'm going to be gone on my 6 month anniversary, so I hope the Q Admin won't mind horribly if I write this and link to it instead of having a ramble. It is somewhat Quit related, because it was born from the Qmails I've gotten from people who are concerned that I'll be around matches or lighters over the 4th. I just want to show you a little bit of what goes into the making of a professional pyro display. Because, in the 4 years I've been a pyrotechnician, I've only been on one hand-fired show.

Pretty much every show starts out with a well-packed truck, and on all sides of the truck there will be a placard indicating that explosives are on board. Nothing makes me more nervous than driving down the road with a truck full of product, heading toward Seaworld with my BL and having a smoker in the vehicle next to us. It isn't that I think the flames can jump across the lane - what I fear is that the smoker will just flick his finished butt out the window without thinking.

Because most people don't know what this symbol means, or at least it seems so to me. We had stopped for gas one day, and some nut comes driving up full speed and comes to a screeching halt right behind a placarded truck. Hello??? The atmospheric discharge from lighting can set off a box of 1.3g fireworks -- why are we making sparks here?

Anyway. We unpack the truck and set up either the racks or the troughs. A trough is exactly what it sounds like - wooden walls making a rectangle, and inside the rectangle, the guns (or mortars) are placed according to legal guidelines. Then a backhoe fills in between the guns with yards and yards of sand, holding the guns in place.

Racks are different. They're made of wood and each rack is made to hold a specific size of gun. Guns have to be a certain height, depending on the size of shell they will fire. So you can't put too many big guns in a single rack. For instance, to the right is a picture of four 6" gun racks held together by what are called "racks feet". Racks feet are just strips of 3/4 inch plywood hammered into the butt end of racks to hold them all together.

If we didn't do it this way, the racks would be too heavy to load on and off the truck. So a rack show involves a lot more "building" than a trough show does. The show we're doing next week is a trough show. And for that, I am very very thankful.

After the racks or troughs are put together (or while this is taking place, if you have a big enough crew), the shells need to be counted and sorted. To the left you see a picture of a six inch shell. On the show we'll do next week, the biggest shell we can have is a 5" shell. For every inch of shell size on a professional pyro show, you have to have XX number of feet between the field and the public. So, to comply with the laws, all our shells will be 5" or less.

Each shell is numbered by the choreographer to match up with and make pictures that relate to the music that will be playing. The shell here is numbered 40-C. That means it will go in trough (or rack) 4 and plug into the module at position 0C.

A module looks like this. Since each group of racks or each trough can contain 48 guns, we "address" each shot through a module like this or through a rail that is programmed with a specific sequence number. It sounds much more complicated than it is. Suffice it to say that the shell above would be wired into the module shown in position C.

So on our show next week, some of us will be inventorying shells and sorting them by trough number while others unload the truck and actually build the troughs. We'll knock off for supper after all of that is done. The next day, we'll begin "dropping and loading" the show.

The first step in dropping and loading is placing the shells on the gun into which it will be dropped. This is a secondary inventory measure of sorts, and a visual method of ensuring you have all the shells you are supposed to have. When all the shells are sitting atop the gun that it'll be loaded into, the field looks something like this.

From here out it's just a game of dropping (gently) the shell into the gun, stress relieving the wire, running the wire to the correct spot on the module, and wiring it in. Basically, if you can wire stereo speakers, you can wire a professional fireworks show. There is really nothing complicated about it. If I can do it... well, you get the idea.

At this point, the shells are dropped and loaded and it's time to test for continuity. What that means is that we send a (very) weak electrical signal to each address to be sure something is wired in (or not) as scripted. In order for that to work, the module pictured above has to plug into the back of the firing unit. Look at the picture of the module. You'll see a wire running into one side and out of the other. The first module wires into the next module, which wires into the next, etc. That's called daisy chaining. The last module in the series is wired into the back of the firing unit. Pictured here is a Pyrodigital unit, which is a computer that has the entire show's timing sequence programmed in. The control panel of a Pyrodigial unit is pictured here. With a Pyrodigital unit, being the shooter means holding down one button.

The other type of firing unit is a peg board. With this type of firing unit, the shooter actually listens to a series of pre-recorded cues which say "Fire One!".... "Fire Two!".... "Fire Three!"... throughout the entire show. At each cue, the shooter touches a pin to the appropriate peg, which sends the electircal signal to the correct module, through it and into the correct shell's wire. The electrical current will then touch off the black powder in the shell's lift charge bag, which will send the shell along the path of least resistance -- whichever way the gun is pointed (hopefullly UP!).

When the show is over, we listen -- strain to hear -- the applause. Because we really don't get paid to do this stuff. We do it for the applause, the cheers, the looks on the faces of each kid who found the entire show magical. And that has to carry us through, because while everybody else is driving home, or going out for some ice cream...

...we are clearing every gun, cleaning up a very dirty field, de-constructing all the racks or troughs, packing up the truck and policing the area to be sure there are no dangerous things left lying around on our sponsor's site. Our show this year will shoot at 9 p.m. We will be very fortunate to leave the field before 11:30 p.m.

I'm 50 years old. I find that every year, it takes longer and longer to recover from these shows. This year, I anticipate that it will take at least 3 days of rest before I become human again.

But it'll be such a good time...