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Shopping for Good Aerial Repeaters or "Cakes"
These are a few good rules to follow so that you pick out good cakes that you will enjoy, and want to buy more of. At firework distributor that I work for, there are over 100 different types of cake repeating items. All the cakes have a wide range and variety of effects, that you can think of. With all of this variety how do you pick out ones you will like?
1. The first way to get great cakes is ask someone who works there what they like and if they could walk around with you and help you pick out some items. Chances are if they work at the place they know what most of the items do. This is another reason why you should stay away from tent firework stands, the way they work is a company sends them stuff and tells them to get rid of it. Another thing you have to be wary of is the salesperson who tells you everything is great, always ask him or her what items they didn't like, or what ones are better than other. Try to describe the effects that you like, to see if they have a cake similar to that effect.
| 2. The next thing to do when picking out cake repeating items is to look
for Performance labels that are starting to appear on newer items, these
give you a brief description of what the item does. If you still want to
know more about the piece ask a salesperson, they should know more about a
piece like the duration and height of it.
Another thing to look for when purchasing items is the performance
sheet that might be displayed underneath different products. The
picture to the right shows the performance sheets for the two items
above them. |
|
3. The one thing that people have a big misconception about when it comes to cakes is more shots isn't always better than fewer shows. Most cake repeating items that have a high number of rounds in it, chances are the effects are going to be small. This is good if you have a small area to set the item off in. What really matters when deciding how good a piece is by the diameter of each individual tube, a shell that comes out a 1/2 inch tube and one that comes out in a 2 inch tube will be different in size with the 2 inch item having less, but bigger shots. Also people think that if there are more shots then it will last longer that is true in some cases but not all, most cake items last anywhere from 20 seconds to a minute in length. I try to stay away from items that have more than 36 tubes in it, unless it shoots groups at a time. After the 30th shot of the same thing people tend to loose interest in the item.
4. When picking out cakes the height, size, and level of technology of the effects is inline with the price of the piece. Most really good cakes start around the $7.50 range and up. Items that are of the same price bracket will perform the same in height, size, etc. So two $12.00 cakes will perform similarly.
5. Another thing to take into consideration is who the fireworks are made by. You want to make sure that you buy fireworks made by name brands. Some of the name brands are Peacock, Black Cat Fireworks, Brother's Brand, and World Class Fireworks. While these items might be a little bit more expensive than no name brands they are well worth the extra cost. Peacock makes Po-Sing rockets they are pricy but after testing out a bunch of them for work they are definitely well worth it.