Shirdley Park display (Cat4)

Every year I get to watch a Cat4 display about 5 minutes from home. This year I stayed at home, and watched the bigger stuff from my bedroom window. Now whats better than watching huge shells bursting whilst in the comfort in your own, warm bedroom?!
A couple of pics I grabbed from my windowsil.

Heres the start of the display, using a good few of the smaller shells. They where are really nice, cream Chrysanthemum effect.


Some larger shells bursting. Dont know what effect they were, the stars changed from bright red to bright blue.

Pretty red and orange bursts.


Now green



Silver Crossettes




Red ring shell wth a green heart in the center.


Smaller shells


Ring shells




Some of the um, larger shells

nice, sometimes on a clear night i can see the fireworks display from my garden also.
nice red+green ring shell.

Cool! Shirdley park had quite a few huge shells this year, anyone know whos behind the display?

Some more bursts.

nice pics... need a tri-pod though to steady the camera.
not always the easiest thing to take pictures off. Hope the new site has a place where registered users can upload pictures to as I expect that like myself there are a few others with pictures around that other members could enjoy.

Mark

I went to the firing site today, pretty shocked at what I found!

A live, unburnt Portfire
4x Portfire ends
Hundreds of fragments of casings
Loads of Cable ties
Holes where stakes had been
Tons of legnths of burnt Quickmatch
A good few of those little yellow caps off E-Matches
Liftcharge bags from the shells
Tubes that look live, still with the nozzles in and endcaps.

Im not angry at the firers, because the display was awesome and I know you carn't get absolutley everything. But come on, the stuff I found was HUGE, so it's not like they carn't be seen.
The Portfires had 'Fantastic Fireworks' written on them, and so did the lables on the liftcharge bags, could this mean that they fired the show? I only saw one other brand, Vulcan fusecaps. Ill post some pictures in a minute.

i went down to my local display site the day after and i was disappointed that i saw nothing, not even a shell casing:(.

A view of the firing site


Unfired Portfire


Used Portfires


Porfire


Piece of casing


Ut-Ohh, this doesn't look good! From this,


To these. They were scaringly heavy! (What are they?)


Any of you Cat4 firers want to inform me on what these are? Its like a foam covered nozzle


A huge tube, with a really thick wall! What would this be used for? The inside was bareley charred


The bottom of the tube








So, erm not everything went to plan then! Obviously a mortar landed and exploded. Proof = fragments of shell casing still imbeded in the soil.
http://i5.photobucke...RF/P1010037.jpg

Label off something Cat4
http://i5.photobucke...RF/P1010046.jpg

Collection of tubes
http://i5.photobucke...RF/P1010050.jpg

Strips of Quickmatch tube, what are the plastic connectors? For E-Matches?
http://i5.photobucke...RF/P1010059.jpg

Smaller lift charge bag
http://i5.photobucke...RF/P1010060.jpg

Bigger lift charge bag, the bag had 9" written on the bottom
http://i5.photobucke...RF/P1010061.jpg

Couple of labels that were lying around on the arial picture of firing site
http://i5.photobucke...RF/P1010062.jpg

i went down to my local display site the day after and i was disappointed that i saw nothing, not even a shell casing:(.

The bigger pieces, shell hemis and things get collected on the night they are fired usually. Just stops people from looking around at whats left before the firers and finding something what might not have gone off.

The " foam covered nozzle" piece that you found looks to me like a spacer/delay element that are used in cat 4 candles. Have a look at the latest passfire autopsy on a 45mm Italian Candle.

Nothing unusual about the debri that you found on the site. Depending on what the arrangements are it may not have been up to the display company to clear the site as some organisers get in a specialist clearing company to clear a site. In most cases the display company will clear obvious debri from a site and if it is there resposibility to clear the site properly they should do so. A lot of the items you have found such as lift bags, tubes etc are bio degradeble and will break down in a very short space of time. Even the inserts in the tubes are made of clay and will also break down quite quickly - the clay plug is what makes them heavy. Take a cat 4 cake for instance.. say around 25kg before firing.. after firing it will be around 24kg.. all the weight is in those clay plugs. The foam items you found are infact delays used in candles and have a plastic centre core.
The strips of qickmatch with the plastic caps are normaly specific to vulcan shells and the plastic pieces are designed for a specific firing system.
You comment about the mortar going off is not accurate.. mortars are the tubes that shells or mines are fiered from. It is also normal to see various holes where stakes have been removed on a site but these to will sort themselves out withing a few days with a little help from the rain.
As for finding unused port fires.. you try wondering around a site after a show with a torch and try get every bit of debri.. you are bound to miss the odd thing here and there and not everything can be picked up with a rake (oh the dreded rake in the van).

Cool, spacers for Cat4 candles

The_Djinn:

I know that you carn't get every piece of debris but it found that lot within 30minutes of walking around the field. I think if a member of the public whom had no knolage of these things would be pretty alarmed at the fact that theres pieces of fireworks lying round.

I thought the legnths of blue quickmatch with a plastic end, was so that you can light it with a E-Match.

Theres a small zoo like thing at the corner of the park, and it fell within the fallout zone, to me this is unsafe, putting the lives of animals at risk. The firers were not short of space, in a park so it wouldn't hurt to move the firing site a little to cut off any fallout landing in the zoo.

But enough of me ranting on, before I get flamed

The " foam covered nozzle" piece that you found looks to me like a spacer/delay element that are used in cat 4 candles. Have a look at the latest passfire autopsy on a 45mm Italian Candle.

I would look at the autopsy but I have only got a guest account

You wont get flamed
I agree that the company involved should have taken the animals into account, that is if they were made aware of them during inicial site visits etc. Even when we are not requiered to clear a site we still make a concious effort to pick up any visible quick match remains and as much debri as possible.

If you ever get a chance to visit the Kimbolton factory, you will see the press that is used to insert the foam delays into candles... they are basicaly forced through a tapered collar into the tube between each device ie. commet. you would have seen the plastic centre with a hole in the middle, this is to accomodate a fuse which is ignited by the lift of each previous device in the tube and burns through to the next section to ignite its lift... simple yet very effective.

If you get the chance to see a vulcan shell, you will see the blue quick match... there is always 2 leaders comming from the lift, the one with the plastic insert is generally very short and close to the lift, where as the other is severall feet in lenth. The e-match is normally placed directly into the longer lenth of quick match.

Hope this has answered some of your questions.

Mark

Did you walk around and find these things in the daylight or night time?

can see where this is leading

good test... throw everything in back yard, wait till 20h00 and see how much of it you can find

lol

Mark