The Other McCain

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Now THAT Is What I Call a ‘Finale’

Posted on | July 9, 2011 | 12 Comments

From Lancaster, Ohio’s 4th of July show:

That show was previewed by the local newspaper July 1:

“When that finale is done, the only thing you hear is the rip-roaring of the crowd,” [Hamburg Fireworks president Ken Sprague] said. “They’re saying, ‘Oh, my God,’ and, ‘Wow.’ The wow factor is huge.” . . .
Sprague said it’s difficult to say exactly how much firepower will be let off Monday. But the five-minute grand finale alone has more than 3,000 shots.
“The grand finale is what makes the Lancaster show so awesome,” Sprague said. “Every grand finale, in my opinion, should end with the big loud kabooms, or what we call salutes. It’s very intense at the end of the Lancaster show.”

Five minutes = 300 seconds, so the finale (which actually went for six minutes) averaged nearly 10 shots per second.

Of course, that’s a professional show, but you’d be amazed at what can be accomplished using ordinary consumer fireworks — if you use enough. And by “enough,” I mean multiple cases of the stuff.

For example, a 96-shot color pearl cake is the kind of thing that sells for $4 at a roadside fireworks stand. Shoot one of those, and it’s not too impressive. Shoot 313 of them at a time, however . . .

That’s nearly $500 worth (wholesale) in less than 90 seconds. Completely insane, right? But then the next year, they shot another small repeater, the 19-shot Cobra Strike, which is a crackling comet effect. Nice, but not particularly impressive. Except they shot 10 cases (240) of them — which is about $700 wholesale — in 40 seconds:


Category: Fireworks, Video

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