Get Ready For Your New Years Show NOW!

Get Ready For Your New Years Show NOW!

by: Matthew Kleinmann

Fall is rapidly turning into winter, but there is one more great opportunity for fireworks before next spring is upon us.  New Years eve. A festive occasion to gather with friends and family and fireworks are a colorful way to bring in the new year.

Fireworks are especially nice in the winter.  I am not sure if it is the snap in the air, or the fact that the sky is truly jet black by the time you illuminate it, or the fact that if there is snow on the ground it reflects back and gives the entire landscape a surreal look.

As nice as fireworks look in the winter, shooting them can be a completely different story.  While everybody else is in the nice warm house or taking a quick stroll out on the deck, the poor shooter has spent a good amount of time outdoors setting up, and firing the show.  Or have they?

I am going to share with you a few ideas for putting on a new years spectacular that both you and your guests will enjoy, and you might even be able to stay warm.

The first thing that is in your favor is that it is cold and miserable out.  This means that most people are not going to want to go out, or if they do it will be for a quick stroll out on the deck or porch.  Don’t count on people wanting to spend half an hour out in the cold, or even crowded up in a window. Your winter time show can be shorter and no one will feel short changed.

The second big thing in your favor is the fact that most people will be looking out of windows, not wanting to brave the elements outside.  Take a look out the windows in your house that overlook the area you want to be shooting in and I would be willing to bet that you do not want to be shooting things that are going to be breaking hundreds of feet in the sky.  For once in our fireworks lives, smaller devices will work better. You are better off with ground effects than shells that break over where people can see them from your windows.

The third thing is there are literally TONS of wonderful cakes that have cool effects and break relatively low.  Sometimes the boxes or the videos will give you the information you need as to the average break height and how long the cake burns for.  If that information is not available, figure a 1.75” shell will break around 100 feet and a .75” shell will break around 50 feet. The smaller the tubes in the cake, the lower they are going to burst, assuming they are shells and not ground effects.  

This is part of the beauty of cakes is they are pre wired to do neat things.  Be it fan back and forth while changing colors, to going from shells to fountain effects back to shells.  And generally, the burn time of a cake is stated, so you have a good idea how long a cake will last, and what it will do.  The videos are also valuable for seeing the exact timing. You can also get cakes that are all shells or all ground effects.

For a winter show that you can enjoy as much as your guests, I would suggest that the show be totally cake based.  As much fun as it is running around with a portfire and touching things off in the summer, this is just not near as much fun in the cold of the winter.  The second thing I would suggest is that you invest in an inexpensive electronic firing system. One of the systems with 12 channels should be fine. It is not hard to find cakes that burn for more than a minute and with people gathered around windows, a 15 minute show is probably about the right time to quit.

I would also suggest that if you have a garage or shed to work in, that you pre-wire your show.  I tend to be both cheap and lazy. I would find a pallet or two and nail a pair of runners on the bottom and use liberal amounts of duct tape and bailing wire to secure the cakes to the top of the pallet, and use a piece of rope to drag it out to the final shooting spot with.  The cakes can be in close proximity. Make sure you leave the plastic or foil covering on them to keep sparks from one from igniting another, and be sure to wrap your fuses and e matches in foil so sparks can not start them prematurely. You can put the remote pods for the firing system in a plastic tote and if you are concerned about a spark starting that on fire, put a piece of plywood on top of it.  You could try taping aluminum foil to the top as well but that may interfere with the radio signals to the pods.

I would start with some cakes that are loud and flashy to catch people's attention, and then work into more artistic cakes with fans and perhaps mixed ground effects.  You can also double up on some of them, and place them at complementary angles. Pro tip: You can get an inclinometer app for most smartphones, if you want to have say fountains spraying across each other in perfectly complementary arcs. And of course there are lots of finale cakes.  Just resist the temptation to get the largest diameter ones as they will be really pretty for the folks down the block but not so much for the people looking out your windows.

I have previously tested a pretty typical 12 channel firing system with 3 4 channel pods, and with fresh batteries all around we were able to fire 5 e matches in series and fire it over 200 feet away in good weather.  Given I suspect this will be within 100 feet of your house, you should be able to fire the entire show from the warm confines of your house along with your guests. You may want to have a cue sheet and a watch just to have an idea of how long each cake will last.

The pre set up show should be fine for hours outside with no ill effects if all the cakes are left covered and the fusing is foiled over and the electronics are under cover.  You can drag it out before dark and make one quick trip out to arm all the remotes just before show time. It would be a good idea to go out and grab the electronics and make sure nothing is left smoldering after the show, but the bulk of the evening can be devoted to having a good time, and your guests will still enjoy a very high quality show.

 

Have a safe and happy New Year. 

Matthew Kleinmann is a licensed pyrotechnician and a staff writer for Mess's Fireworks.