Great Britain 2019

August 2019, Pyrotex finished our competitions for the year in the UK at Belvoir Castle for MLE Firework Champions. This was the first time we had competed in the competition, and in the UK since 2011. This was an exciting time as we were looking forward to showing the UK our world class firework displays.

The show put together for Firework Champions was going to a be a little different to normal though, instead of our world renown designer, Mark Kelsall, he handed over the reigns to Scott Machin. This would be his first time in designing a show and with him working very closely with Mark, he had a good understanding of firework products and show design.

Spending many late nights listening to different music he had finally picked his soundtrack. Now the show was ready to design, Scott had already explained to Mark that he wanted to do something a bit different and add new sequences and designs that he had seen in the past. Designing the show using FireOne’s Scriptmaker, that is a non-visual/simulation software like most modern programs do, this was very tricky and challenging for him personally but after a couple of days having a practicing, he got the hang of it.

After a couple of weekends prepping his show and finalising everything it was all good to go, vans booked, equipment loaded and crew already to turn up. Unfortunately, the day of the show came, and the weather was horrendous! The display had been postponed until 31^st August. This was a tough pill to swallow and only added to Scott’s anticipation.

Then the 31^st came around and we were back on site for another go, this time the weather was perfect. The 6-man crew worked all day to get the show ready again, all prepped and tested by 5pm! The 100m site was full of fireworks, 9 front single shot positions, 3 cake, slice and shell positions all equalling too just under 1200 cues for the 10-minute pyro musical.

 The time had come, we were ready to fire, nerves were high. Once the show started to fire, the nerves turned to being overwhelmed and full of emotion, the show fired perfectly leading up to the huge golden crackling crossette finale! The other teams were impressed with the display and shook hands to say well done. The other 2 competitors fired their shows followed by MLE’s closing display. The votes were counted and what seemed a lifetime the results came in! Pyrotex 1^st Place!!! Scott’s first design of a show and he went and won it in front of his friends and family! Safe to say he could not have been any prouder of his crew and Mark for this great opportunity.