Not bad at all Dan! It is nice to see others who like to put on a show and not just shoot some firework every couple of minutes.
My last show was 10 years ago (I still have my embroidered shirt) when my parents used to put on a big 4th of July bash. That was also my 10th year of shooting off fireworks. The first year's budget was something like $250 that I shot all myself and I would drive 5 hours to Indiana to get some 'deals'... The last year we shot off over $6,000 in fireworks paid for mainly by myself and my dad, but we always had about 75 people at the bash and most of them chipped in. There were 4 of us hand firing a majority of it, and a 5th person reloading mortar tubes. I had several cake boards like you were shooting, and a big finally close to what you did (I think that you shot off more shells due to the larger number of cakes, where I shot off a good number of mortar tubes as well).
Things have changed so much since then. There were no such thing in consumer fireworks as "Z Cakes" (ones that fire back and forth) as they all just shot straight up.
I have been itching to put on a show again, but I now live in the middle of Iowa, so it would take some driving to get fireworks and take them to my parent's house in Illinois. The live in a small 5 house neighborhood outside of city limits by a couple of miles. When I checked on a permit, I was told that I actually didn't need one. I checked with the city which said that they didn't have any jurisdiction, checked with the county who didn't have any laws about it, and checked with the state police and they said that the only law for where they lived was a noise disturbance law, and the officer actually just recommended that we just invite all of the neighbors to cover that part.
We did have the police show up still, but they were the city cops who came out, admitted that they couldn't and didn't really care to stop us, but wanted to let us know that we were stopping traffic on the highway a little over a mile away and that if anyone else called about the stopped traffic the state troopers would get involved. They told us that we had at least 30 minutes, which was more than enough since we were pretty much ready to light off the finally.
You brought back some great memories Dan. Maybe next year (assuming I am finally employed again) I'll do another show. This time at my sister's house (in eastern Iowa) as she lives near a city cop and a state trooper out in the middle of nowhere and they were shooting off stuff this year. Plus, my uncle is the major of the city and he'd be there to help cover that basis as well.
