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  • Avatar of Mr.b

    Mr.b 3:17 pm on March 27, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: birthday, , , , Initially Marcel, Marcel, shoot   

    Last night was great fun! Marcel was having a birthday party with a few friends, and had bought some fireworks for the occassion. Initially Marcel and his friends were going to shoot the fireworks themselves, but jumped at our offer to shoot them for him – free of charge – so that he could relax and enjoy his own firework show, and also to ensure that everything was done safely.

    After setting the fireworks up on spare land close to Marcel’s villa, I asked him if he would like to shoot the show himself, using one of our wireless remote firing systems… big grins all round!! I do believe we have a closet pyro-freak in the making here!!!

    Marcel had a great time pressing the remote buttons to shoot his fireworks, and I hope it will give him yet another excellent memory of his Birthday Firework Display!

    HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARCEL !!!

    Marcel at the helm!

    Off we go! lol

    An awfull 'out of focus' photo (all my fault sadly!) of Marcel's birthday-bash friends!

     
  • Avatar of Mr.b

    Mr.b 6:00 pm on March 25, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Nikki Beach, , shoot, ,   

    It was sad that we didn’t have more time with Christian and Melanie, particularly as we are so busy that it would have been great fun to work along-side them in choreographing/planning some of the numerous shoots we have this month. Maybe next time eh? :)

    Last night we had all 3 teams out at shoots, and it was a fantastic night for numerous reasons… not least of all because all of the shoots went perfectly, with all 3 clients more than happy with our high levels of service.

    I chose to go to the smallest shoot we had last night, as I had been in contact with Jeffrey (the client) for some time, helping to plan what was going to be a very special evening for him and his girlfriend, and I wanted to make sure that everything went perfect for them. Jeffrey and his girlfriend had come to Samui for a short break, and Jeffrey had planned a surprise romantic dinner on the beach at the Silavadee resort, where he planned to ask his girlfriend to marry him.

    We had planned a Lancework banner saying ‘WILL YOU MARRY ME?’ with a lancework Bear on each side of the banner (the bears meant something special to Jeffrey and his girlfriend).

    We sneaked-in prior to the couple coming down to the beach, and set-up the lancework in secret, and then, at the given signal, we set off a small ‘attention-grabber’ 49 shot cake… and – when that finished – lit up the lancework!!! How could any girl refuse such a wonderful, romantic gesture?

    The answer was – of course – YES! (Congratulations to you both from all of us at The Firework Shop!).

    The Silavadee is a beautiful resort in Lamai, with a romantic beach setting, and provides a genuine 5 star service to its guests from some of the best trained staff on the island. Highly recommended.

    The other 2 shoots were over on the south of the island, both wedding party shoots. The shoot at Nikki Beach was particularly impressive, and Blue Team out-shone themselves with the firework display they gave the very special guests, who were delighted with non-stop explosive action!

    After the shoot there the staff began to clear-up the spent firework debris (lots of bits of paper and 100s of small round cardboard ‘plugs’), and were surprised to hear from a member of staff that ‘the other person who shoots (fireworks)’ simply piles all the rubbish next to the bins and leaves it for others to clear up. Our staff explained that we always leave a shoot-site ‘as we found it’ (sometimes cleaner!), and would never leave our rubbish for others to clear up!

    When we say we 'clean up' after our shoots, we REALLY clean-up!

    This gives an indication of the high levels of service we provide our clients, as well as showing that – unlike others – we ‘walk the ‘walk’, and that you really can believe that ‘we do what we say we do’ on our website. After all… our strap line is … ‘Safety – Quality – Service’!

    So… all in all, a very succesful night for all of us, with three couples who are now aware that The Firework Shop goes the extra mile to ensure that the promise of ‘Safety – Quality – Service’ is fullfilled to the utmost.

    It is an honour to play a part in such an important day in the lives of people.

    What a beautiful couple! Jeffrey and his girlfriend (future wife!), with 'yours truly' in the middle! Two lovely people, and we all at The Firework Shop wish them the very best of everything, and look forward to shooting for their wedding when they come back to Samui!

     
  • Avatar of Mr.b

    Mr.b 3:50 pm on March 25, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Europe, , firework experts, , , Germany, , shoot   

    The last couple of weeks have been hectic (slight understatement there! lol), and there is little sign of it easing up for the next month or so at least! It’s all good news though – business-wise – so I am absolutely NOT complaining lol.

    We were vivited by our old friends (old as in we have known them for a while – as opposed to them being old!) Christian and Melanie from Wupperthal, Germany a week ago. It was so good to see them again, particularly as both of them are firework ‘experts’ in their own right. They run their own firework shop in Wupperthal, so we spent a lot of time swapping stories, and me picking their brains for any information that could help us improve our service and standards of safety. Christian mentioned the cost of remote firing systems in Europe (very expensive), so I put him in touch with a Chinese contact of ours that actually manufacture many of the sytems available in Europe… at around 50% of the cost if bought from them direct! I showed Christian and Melanie some of the systems we use, and their faces lit up… I hope they work out for you guys!

    I will upload some pictures soon, as well as a link to their website. I do hope that next time (soon?) we will be able to spend more time together… it is so cool talking to fellow ‘pyro-nuts’, and I am proud to call Chris and Mel our Pyro- brother and sister!

    There can be nothing better than the approval of your peers, and when Chris and Mel saw how we set-up and shoot, and the level of safety we bring to all aspects of our work they gave us the ‘thumbs-up’! For our standards of safety and service to be acceptable by our peers – judging us under European standards – then I can feel proud about our work. Thank you to you both… and I hope we meet again very soon. Have a safe trip home guys!!! :) :) :)

    Christian & Melanie enjoying Laarn's cooking at our home.

     
  • Avatar of Mr.b

    Mr.b 5:07 pm on December 11, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , full eclipse, full moon, shoot, , ,   

    Full Moon, Full Eclipse, Full on! :) 

    Strange day yesterday! We had two meetings with prospective clients in the shop, and both turned out to be absolute firework nuts, so – instead of taking 15/20 minutes, both turned out to be 2 hour long ‘chats’! It is great to meet fellow pyro-nuts… those that really do know what they are talking about… but it is a fairly rare occurrence, however, yesterday was ‘pyro-heaven’ for me… bloody great! lol. The first meeting was with a guy who is opening a new hotel/resort on the island, right on the beach, and he wanted fireworks as part of the opening ceremony later this month. He knew exactly what he wanted, and, for a change, this was a guy who’s expectations were not only realistic, but possible! :) The shoot will include a beautiful Lancework set-piece (nobody else on Samui can offer Lancework, which made us the first choice), which will be followed by a choreographed 2.5 minute firework display, set to a piece of music which is just perfect for fireworks!
    It is great to choreograph shows like this, and the fully programmable sequencers that we have make it possible to time individual cues down to a tenth of a second! We also came up with loads of other ideas that will go towards making the opening of this hotel/resort something really special! I will, of course, post the video and more details of the shoot after the event.
    The second meeting was for an Aussie guy and his Thai girlfriend, who are getting married soon. I have never met a guy so enthusiastic about life in general, and his enthusiasm was infectious! :) After only 10 minutes or so we were chatting away like two old friends… as though we had known each other for years! He was not just a ‘character’, but a clever, adept, and intelligent guy who was ‘driven’.. but managed to balance his life with a morality that made him want to help others and share his good fortune. An amazing guy who I am sure will be cropping up in my posts again in the future (things in the pipeline and all that lol).
    After an hour or so we both realised that we had chatted about everything EXCEPT his wedding! Great stuff! :)
    In the end he simply told us that he ‘knew that we knew what we were talking about’ and so trusted us implicitly. Essentially we had as big a budget as we needed to put on a firework display that would last 5 minutes! Here was a guy who had visited every shop that sold fireworks, but decided that only The Firework Shop could deliver… and, coming from someone as knowledgeable as him, this is a complement indeed!

    Still buzzing after meeting ‘Mushrooman’ (his nickname) I came home to be welcomed by the three pooches and my various assortment of birds… all screaming for food (it was past their normal feeding time), and then my good friend Bom turned-up to tell me about the full eclipse of the moon later that night. So – after feeding the animals – Bom and I settled down with a few Gin and Tonics to wait for the eclipse to start. Boy was it worth the wait!
    As the moon was around half-eclipsed (is that a word?) there were firecrackers (and a few guns) going off all around us… people ‘shooting at the moon’ for good luck! Truly amazing Thailand! lol :) :) :)

     
  • Avatar of Mr.b

    Mr.b 11:03 pm on November 8, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , shoot   

    Just for clarity I thought that I should post a couple of pics of a few of the wireless remote firing systems we use… A ‘certain person’ on Samui brags of having ’22 electronic firing units’.. these being exactly the same kind units that The Firework Shop actually lends to customers who want to shoot their own fireworks… the units being very nice and easy to use ‘hobbyist’ systems for amateurs wanting to shoot their own fireworks. However, they are a far cry from the professional wireless firing systems that are used by The Firework Shop to shoot the professional displays we provide… 2 kinds of our wireless remote control firing systems can be seen in the pics below…

    This wireless remote firing system is capable of utilizing 10 'slave' units (four of which are shown), with each 'slave' capable of firing more than 100 fireworks... meaning that this system can fire more than 1,000 fireworks from up to 10 different places, at the same time! (Rather more than '24' eh? lol)

    Another example of a wireless remote firing system we sometimes use... with the control desk having the ability to shoot 10 different 'sets' of firing units, each 'set' consisting of 12 cues, and each cue capable of firing up to 5 fireworks (still with me? lol). This means that each of these systems can fire up to 600 fireworks each!

    These are the small hand-held wireless systems that we rent to customers wanting to shoot their own fireworks. Each system can fire up to 24 fireworks (as used by the contributer below). They are great little 'hobbyist' systems for amateurs to use, and are therefore easy to operate... as 'Mr.R' (who commented below) will surely know :)

    For info. that might be of interest to other ‘pyro-nuts’ (like myself!) out there in web-land, we also use numerous 10 cue sequencers along-side the wireless remotes… each sequencer being fully-programmable!

    Just so you know! lol lol :) Have a great day!

     
  • Avatar of Mr.b

    Mr.b 12:12 am on August 3, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Nu Blue Team, , , shoot, ,   

    The Firework Shop for Safety- Quality – Service 

    What a great week it’s been for all of The Firework Shop’s 3 shooting teams! They have been kept busy this week, with a total of 6 shoots… and it’s not finished yet, as we have 3 more bookings over the next 3 days before a ’rest’ of 2 days! Tonight’s shoot was spectacular, with ’Blue Team’ excelling themselves, putting on a fantastic show for a wedding party. It makes me proud to see them work so well as a team… very professional, checking each other’s work, and putting safety first. ’Nu’ – Blue Team leader, had planned the show beautifully, mixing multi-shot repeaters with contrasting mortars of various sizes – ranging from 3 inch diameter up to 10 inch diameter. The clients were so pleased that they gave 5,000 baht as a tip to the shooting team (5 in the team, so a nice 1,000 extra – on top of their wage!)… needless to say they were delighted! This is the biggest tip ever given to any of our teams… very generous indeed.
    I am really happy with our black mortar tubes – made to our higher specs, and much safer than most of the generally available orange fibre tubes. I have some photos of a couple of orange tubes which were demolished during a shoot done by a friend… very scary! Of course, I am sure that not all suppliers of orange tubes ’skimp’ on quality, but it goes to show that it is worth checking the quality of fibre tubes before buying them, and not just going for the cheaper option, in an effort to ’cut down overheads’. The Firework Shop has not – and never will – compromise the safety of our clients or staff… which is why we are the best on Koh Samui of course! :)

     
  • Avatar of Mr.b

    Mr.b 7:37 pm on October 30, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , make your own, , , , , remote firer, shoot,   

    Want to make your own firework remote? 

    Hi fellow pyro-nuts! If you want to know how to make a basic – but very usable – firework remote firer, stay tuned! I am in the final stages of making a ‘tarted-up nailboard’ firing desk, and will soon be putting up the video showing how it was made. It is a glorified nailboard, but with 70 odd connections – each one able to shoot one or more fireworks. It is easy to make, runs off a car battery, and uses easily available bits and pieces. Won’t be too long, so keep checking in!

     
    • jon 10:31 am on March 11, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      i do a family show every 4 of july and every one conplaines how long the delay is between me lighting them off we all chip in to buy them but i am in charge in setting them off i have been trying to make some thing like this

      • Avatar of Mr.b

        Mr.b 1:16 pm on March 11, 2011 Permalink | Reply

        Hi Jon… sorry that I have been a bit ‘tardy’ with getting this video up, but I promise that it will be up within the next day or so! It is easy to make a ‘scaled-down’ version of my glorified nailboard so that you can shoot your fireworks safely (and a bit quicker too!)… Thanks for taking the time to comment, and pop back tomorrow for a comprehensive video showing how you can make your very own remote firing system!

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