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Electrical Firing - Getting Started
This article is going to walk through designing a partial to fully electrically fired consumer firework display. The electrical firing unit (EFU) we are going to be using is the F5 Remote Firing System, that is made by phantom. While we could spend the time and try to build our own for $40.00 this is a really nice unit. Also the E-fuses can be shipped directly to your house, no trying to make you own e-matches. When compared to a home built system this system beats it for price and ease of use and setup. I have all ready bought 3 separate F5 Remote Firing Systems for this years show.
Gather necessary equipment
To fully utilize and justify the cost of electrically firing a
display you are going to need a few piece of equipment to do some of these
techniques. I would recommend having a few mortar racks setup to make
sure that the mortars are firmly secured to prevent them from tipping
over. For quicker setup of medium sized cakes I also would have a few
adjustable cake racks setup. This will allow you to setup your firework
display the night before to help cut down on the time that it will take
to setup up your display in the firing area.
Plan what you are going to Electrically fire
If you are only going to partially electrically fire you show decide
what you are going to fire electrically. If you have mortars racks
available are you going to electrically fire all of your shells, or just
cakes. If you have to reload I wouldn't try to electrically fire many
shells due to the time it takes to reload and hook up the E-Fuses, not
to mention trying to do that in the dark.
Setting up to Electrically fire your show
I have found that if the grass is not cut really short that
sometimes it gets in the way of the receiver getting the signal to fire.
To eliminate this problem I too a 2x6 and cut blocks large enough for
the receiver to sit on so that it has a clear line of site to the
transmitter. When you setup you firing area make sure that you place the
receivers somewhere you won't be tripping over the E-fuse cords.
Single Receiver
When using a single receiver attach all
of your E-fuses to the items that you are going to electrically fire
during your show. Try to place items in sequential order so that all you
have to do is hit the fire button 5 times and then move the receiver to
the next E-fuse group. Also with a single receiver try to fuse multiple
items together so that you can ignite more than 5 items and have to
setup again.
Multiple Receivers
When you are using multiple receivers like I am, make sure to only
have one unit armed at a time. If you have more than one unit armed at a
time it could result in an accidental ignition of items that you did not
intend to ignite. Make sure that when you are planning your layout of
the show to try to group items together the you would to fire right
after each item. If you want to fire from two receivers at the same time
make sure that both receivers are pointing in the same direction and are
armed. You should be able to ignite items from both receivers, if doing
this for a show make sure to test it out to make sure it will work
before your show. Also if you have multiple receivers are you going to
have more than one person with a transmitter?, for safety reasons you
should try to keep it down to one transmitter.