My summer of bangs is over... phew - part 3

After 4 weeks that included Antwerp 70.3, 11 hours a day for 3 weeks working on the Edinburgh Military Tattoo AND working at Venture Scotland, 2 weddings, a two day 1^st aid course, a kayak session and a trip to Glentress mountain biking… I took a week off… And worked on the Bank of Scotland (BOS) end of festival firework concert! No rest for the wicked!

The BOS fireworks concert is the biggest fireworks display in Europe. It is choreographed to a live orchestra (Handel), contained 4.5 tonnes of gross fireworks and lasted for 45 minutes. I took 15 of us 7 days to set up, 45 minutes to fire and 4 hours to clean up after. There is also plenty of social life in the pub!

The fireworks cover the whole area that you can see in this photo, including down the ramparts on the right and in the bays that you can just about see on the left.

My role in this display started off rigging some of the 700 candles to 45 of the racks seen here.

The first three days went well. We had good weather and we got a lot of kit out. Unfortunately, it rained so hard on Thursday and Friday that the waterproofing started to fail… big time. I moved into the firework ‘1^st aid’ tent. We had to bring in the kit that was soaking up the water, try to dry it, rebuild it where necessary, re waterproof it and put it back. This was hugely time consuming, not to mention dangerous and stressful.

Our good start to the week rapidly disappeared as we utilized every bit of daylight to do the 1^st aid, wire it all and then test it all.

We got it all done in the end and here are the photo’s!

My summer of bangs is over... phew - part 2

On the last Friday of the Tattoo I took the day off from my day job (I forgot to mention that I maintained my 9-5 job whilst doing the Tattoo 7-11) to do a pyrotechnic job at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

This was a wee piss take of Britain's Got Talent, called TVs Got Talent, as an opening celebration for the Edinburgh International Television Festival. Thank god it was tongue in cheek, I would have hated for it to be too serious! The winning act was a woman who could sing with her mouth shut!

Me on the right in the foreground, Ant and Dec behind on the stage and the big screen.

Here are some of the effects I used...

Silver jet 1/2 20" (1/2 second burn time and maximum height of 20 feet)

70g Flame pot

My summer of bangs is over... phew - part 1

As some of you might know, one of the reasons I chose Antwerp 70.3 was its timing. It was early August. The reason it needed to be in late July or early August is because I spend the summer blowing things up!

The Wednesday after my race I started working on the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. This is 3.5 weeks of massed pipes and drums, plus other acts, matching up and down the Edinburgh Esplanade in front of an audience of 9000.

(Photo by Susie)

My role is to set up, fire and clean up the punctuation fireworks that run through out the 1.5 hour long show.

The mortars (Photo by Lynn)

A Mine (Photo by Lynn)

Loading the mortars with mines (Photo by Lynn)

Cannon Maroons and Gavin (Lynn)

Shells, Gavin and Stuart (Photo by Lynn)