'Debate' continues over fireworks detonation methods

Local fireworks fans have their chance to weigh in on one of the biggest controversies in the pyrotechnics field. But don't expect to settle the debate.

Sunday night's Cedar Boat Club show was old-school hand-fired. Monday night's Freedom Festival display will be digitally controlled.

“We love to hand-load, hand-light,” said Dean Brown, lead shooter for the boat club. “It might not be as fast, but I'm old-fashioned.”

“To be honest with you, I hate (hand-firing),” said Paul Myers, director of the Freedom Festival show. “I still do it occasionally to keep myself honest, and understand why I hate it.”

Hand-firing versus digital control comes down to “an even split” among pyrotechnicians, said Mark Woodburn of Solon.

“Traditionally, it's hand-fired, and that's a lot more fun,” said Woodburn, a member of the Stumptown Shooters fireworks club, state safety director for the Iowa Pyrotechnics Association, and national standards co-director for the Pyrotechnics Guild International. “It's more fun to light the fuse and walk quickly away.”

However, “Electronic firing is becoming more and more popular,” Woodburn said. “It's risk avoidance, rather than risk prevention. You're not as close to the stuff when it goes off.”

Digital control requires a tube for each shell fired in a show, while tubes (“guns”) can be reloaded when hand-firing - although that requires careful tracking to ensure a shell isn't dropped into an already-loaded tube.

“It's time-consuming, but at the same time it's a lot more entertaining a show” when it's done electronically because firing can be timed accurately and synchronized to music, Myers said.

Programmed through a laptop computer, the digital controller factors each shell's lift time - the period from launch to aerial burst - and break time - the duration a shell's burst lingers in the sky.

“When they say ‘The rockets' red glare,' you'll see the rockets go up,” Myers said.

Myers, 43, and two of his Shueyville neighbors developed their own digital controller in the late 1990s to stage Independence Day shows at his home.

“Next thing we know, it turned into a digitized, computerized system,” he said.

Myers and his partners started a company, Mags Digital Controls, to produce the controllers. By 2003, he was shooting upward of 30 shows a year across the country and training Mags customers the rest of the time. It got to be too much for Myers and his family.

“We decided me being on the road 30 weeks of the year just wasn't a good life,” he said. “I just decided I was going to shoot one show, and that was Cedar Rapids.”

Myers and his partners disbanded their company, but a Mags controller will run tonight's show. Launched from May's Island's grassy plaza, the show will feature more shells this year.

“It should be a little more intense,” said Myers.

The 19-minute, 42-second show will be synchronized to music broadcast over stations KHAK, KDAT, and KMRY starting about 9:40 p.m.

For all the debate over firing methods, the fireworks themselves “haven't changed a whole lot in about 5,000 years, and they're not likely to change any time soon,” Woodburn said.

As it has been for 50 centuries, China is still the world's leading fireworks producer, with makers in Japan, India and Malta competing, he said.

Brown, Myers and their assistant shooters are all state-certified. That means they've passed a written test after an eight-hour course. Candidates must then work five shows, at least one as lead or co-lead shooter, Woodburn said.

Linn and Johnson counties also require shooters to be certified by the PGI.

“I get calls from all over the state this time of year wanting to be certified,” Woodburn said.

“It's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun,” said Brown, who fired his 31st boat club show last night. “It gives you a good feeling when you stand over there at the shoot site and see all the people sitting on the hill across the river.”