Hydroplanes and Mortars

Probably the coolest part of working this show (other than getting to meet lots of nice people (which DEFINITELY includes Ken!)) was getting to see the hydroplane races! They left a wave of water behind them that is reminiscent of the Bellagio fountain. Put it to music and make it hourly and you'd have tourists from around the world coming to see it! There were enough people working this show that setup went very quick, and I even managed to grab a few pictures of teardown this time.

	These are the BIG guns! The 10 and 12 inch mortars were the first to be setup. These were the only guns that needed to be sanded, the rest of the show was done using premade racks.
John and Heather are working on making the racks form a V. Setting up all the racks was supposed to take 4-5 hours. We were done in 2.5. Go team!
	Here are all the racks setup and ready to be loaded. That was it for the first day! This show was a fairly large sized one, checking in at approximately 1100 shells.
Fast forward to day two, it's time to load the guns. No show is complete without being short a large number of shells, and this was no different. We ended up being short about 500 finale chains, which Ken went and retrieved for us.
	Here everyone is working hard to get all the finale chains loaded. You can tell the finale chains by the quickmatch stringing them together. I believe the figure Ken said was that it burned at approximately 40 miles an hour. So light one, and the rest go up pretty much at the same time.
Here we prepare the real finale, Ken! Actually, he's shaking his head at the latest great idea we've had, like knocking all the shells down with a hammer. He likes those kinds of ideas. And yes, he really is a nice guy.
	The setup is complete, so it's time for.. hydroplanes! I think I said this about a bajillion times on site, but OHMYGOD they're so cool! They were streaking by at amazingly high speeds and they left these amazing rooster tails of water.
We were situated near one of the turns, which was awesome because that's where they'd throw the most water. I'd love to ride in one of them! Well, at least I wanted to until my friends told me how they sometimes disintegrate...
	Fast forward to the end of the show! The show is over, but we still have work to do! Here Jon is removing the rack feet. Everything must be taken down and reloaded into the truck.
This is what the guns look like after the show has been fired. The aluminum foil is placed over the guns to keep out stray sparks. But after the show is fired, not much of it is left. You can also see the large amount of black powder left on the guns. Teardown went fast, though and all in all, another successful show!

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All photos copyright Anne Sullivan