We were attacked by the dreaded firing system gremlins last night!!! After all the planning, preparation, and checking (then checking again... and again!) everything was good to go for the mortar only shoot... the final check of the remote systems gave all green lights.. so we waited for the signal to shoot... The word came, and the button pressed... and instead of the opening barrage, only one single 4 inch lifted! Baahn immediately switched over to manual, to shoot step by step, and started pressing the buttons... but only a couple of the mortars lifted... NIGHTMARE! The shoot was split into 3 sections... 3 firing systems... so we abandoned the first section and jumped to the second section, which - thank goodness - fired as it should. This gave us time to check out the problem with the first section... but we couldnt find anything wrong... all lights were green... the power was there... aerials were well connected (the system is WiFi)... all appeared well. As the second section came close to finishing, we decided to link it straight back into the first section... rather than go straight to the finale... it worked! (PHEW!). When baahn had finished shooting the first section step-by-step, we went into the finale (a load of 5 and 6 inch mortars). When it was all done we all looked at each other... the disappointment was obvious... all that work planning and setting up etc... all wasted. Although the display wasnt a complete failure, (I was proud of the guys... all leaping into action to salvage the display)... and we managed at least to keep it going, it was clearly not up to scratch, and the horrible too long gaps at the start of the display would have been obvious to the clients. We take it really personally when something like this happens, although we have been lucky in that - in almost 8 years of operating - we have only had firing systems fail on us a couple of times. Our main concern is not disappointing the clients/guests... but - at the end of the day - firing system failure (although fortunately not too common) can happen to the best of us... we were lucky that the display could be rescued, and although not perfect, at least the guys managed to keep it going (well done guys!). The system has been checked out, and guess what? ABSOLUTELY PERFECT!!! What the heck!? I stopped taking video of the shoot as soon as I realised things werent happening as they should... and helped out with trying to rescue the shoot... so no video! I do hope the clients werent too disappointed :( I suppose we were lucky... at least we didnt have a failure like the one below... which shows that even the Big Guys can sometimes suffer from firing system gremlins!!! https://youtube/watch?v=ndVhgq1yHdA
Posted on: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 04:46:40 +0000
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