DISPLAY REPORT ONE:

Please pardon the french but FFUUUUUCCCKKK MMMEEE!!!

Sorry for that.

I'm a bit drunk now I'll give you a full report later but this was the most awesome fantastic loud loud loud loud loud louder louder louder SUPER MEGA NOISE DECIBEL SCALE MELT DOWN AWESOME EAR BLEEDER HEAD MELT RUN FOR COVER DIG A HOLE BURY YOURSELF AND STICK A COUPLE OF PLANETS IN YOUR EARS AND PAD YOURSELF OUT WITH A FEW GALAXIES and then some super loud fantastic CAT3 display ever ($$)!!!!!!!!

You really should have been there. It was 40 mins of noisy star bursts from ground fireworks and sky fillers from shell burst rockets.

Honestly words can't describe this display, I'm not trying to bull it up and make it sound good, but this was just an onslaught from start to finish %% # %$$ &&*&

I've seen some good CAT3 displays in my time but this bugger takes the biscuit the cracker barrel, the boxes of crackers in the distribution centre and the paddy field where the wheat came from. BBBOOO OOOOOO OOOOOOO OOOOMMMM.

Ill send another enthusiastic (proper report) later. God this was good.

[Now this is a guy who appreciates his stash, he's a future UKFR editor in the making.... Pete]

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Four months later and here is his full report, heheh...

I inadvertently landed the job of doing the company fireworks display in 2001 but there was no way I was going to pass up an opportunity like that. I was offered £800 as the budget I pondered on this all day and being firework mad decided it wasn't enough. I went back to the boss and asked for £1000 and he agreed to it "yyyyyeeeeeesssss!" I thought. Better still I got the fireworks at 25% off trade price [er, so how did you do that then? - Pete and the entire UKFR readership] so I ended up with around £1800 worth of kit.

Now came the hard part I had around 50 barrages/cakes to plan a layout and firing sequence for I spent hours and hours watching each individual firework on a promotional disc trying to decide what would be best (oh how I wish I could have fired them electronically) I finally decided to lay them out in two areas, each area consisted of five rows and four rows deep. I spaced the fireworks 1.5 metres apart with a gap of five metres between the two areas in front of the rows where the fireworks that were to be used in a four stage finale (more on that later). At the back I had ten launch tubes set up for the rockets in a good position where I could keep an eye on what was going on.

The nightmare begins…..

Three weeks prior to the display I went to put all the stakes in place I used two foot long steel poles and drove them in half way but what should have been a simple job took hours the ground was absolute shite chock full of stones I'd knock a stake in it would hit a stone. I'd move it and it would hit another this just went on and on and in the end up took about five hours boy was I pissed off time for large amounts of beer.

Got back to work on Monday morning had a look out of the window to check my site and aaagggghhh nnnnnoooo the whole $%£&** place was under six inches of water what a %%^&$* all my lovely hard work ruined. I decided to tempt fate though and hoped it would be dry on the day after all it was three weeks to firing time.

The big day……

At last the day was here the firing site was bone dry and the weather was better than perfect. But I wasn't happy with the start of the display (at last I'd found an excuse to buy and try a blitzknall) I made my way over to the Great Northern Firework Co bought some extra portfires and the legendary bomb on a stick.

Still not happy with my rocket firing list though I decided to buy an extra ten Brightstar Hell Raiser rockets, and that was that, with the extra rockets I had the perfect firing list, 50 odd ground fireworks and 50+ rockets. WOW….

That afternoon a mate and me proceeded to set up the ground stuff, one side started off with a 19 shot barrage then went on to a cake then barrage then a cake alternately, the other side started off with a cake then a 19 shot barrage and so on, so each side would be firing an opposite firework to the other. On a set up note all the fuses on the left hand side faced left and all the fuses on the right hand side faced right so the two guys firing them didn't have to mess about looking for their fuses. Once everything was in place plastic sheets were wrapped around each firework just in case of rain. About half an hour prior to firing we removed all the plastic sheets and took all the fuse covers off.

A crowd of around 100 employees and family had now gathered in the field having gorged themselves on hot dogs and pies and were ready for a show. For some strange reason at this point all I wanted to do was suck some boiled sweets I'd have killed to get my hands on some (must have been nerves ) after all I was about to set off the best display ever fired in Elland this show put the local round table display to shame.

I lit the blitzknall to get everyone's attention boooooom definitely lived up to the hype it was at this point all the kids wanted to leave (hahahahahahaha- I'm evil!).

After the blitzknall was fired the plan was this let the guys get on with firing the ground stuff and not fire any more rockets until half way through the display, the idea being that it would build up getting bigger and better as it went on.

Now any one wondering about buying brightstars 19 shot barrages just buy em they are loud and mean the noise from this display was incredible we were in the bottom of a valley and everything echoed like mad there were some 4000 bangs in total ranging from pop to boom to massive boom off the shell head rockets you really had to be there to appreciate the noise I just looked up in the air and uttered "FUCK ME!" (sorry) to myself this was far better than I could have hoped for.

Halfway through I started to let rip with the rockets in volleys of three, one hellraiser with two other larger display rockets at a time, this plan was great and was really appreciated by the crowd. It was at this point I looked back and the empty road on the industrial estate was full of cars, now these people had to go out of there way to get here and that gave me such a buzz.

Well all of the ground stuff was gone or so every one thought. Finale time I fired four £15 rockets whilst my mates got ready to fire two, yes two, 500 shot Armageddons at once. One on its own is impressive but two together was mayhem as these finished the crowd must have thought nice ending, but I'm not done yet up went four more rockets and then we fired three towering infernos (now named terminal velocity due to Sept 11) [ouch! I'll let you administer your own grave mate - Pete] these are 28mm 49 shot barrages with varying effects from colored star bursts to huge spinners to crackling rain to seven large salutes the spacing of these was great and they gave great coverage, but there's more yep four more rockets filled the sky and then two satanic desecration sibs were fired together, after these the last five rockets went up and we light the last three fireworks, three atomic warlords, but rather than do what they did on the cdrom all three of them ejected their entire 112 shots in about two secs unexpected but frigging awesome the whole area exploded in an absolute frenzy of mini shell bursts this looked truly pro.

And that was it 40 mins of relentless mayhem I hung around for a while sniffing the last dregs of fireworks smoke out of the air and dragged myself home for loads of beer.

Well that's it a dream came true for me that night I just hope we have another one this year.