This was a very good show for several reasons. First of all, was the use of a large number of rockets. Some of these were fired in very tight clusters, appearing to originate from a single point on the ground and giving the impression of a plant growing upwards very quickly with many stems, the stars of the rockets forming bunches of flowers.
Another feature of the display was the use of aerial spinning devices of every conceivable type from the small fast things which produce a loud “whizzing” noise and fly across the sky (I don’t know the specific name for these – they look like they’re formed from small Catherine (or pin for U.S. readers) wheels. Larger than the whizzers were many tourbillons, which rotate more slowly, producing silver sparks and often terminating in a report. However, the most memorable devices were five or six large rotating “things”, for want of a better word. What happened was that the five or six things slowly rose into the air, rotating at a moderate speed and producing a very wide column of white sparks. They seemed to rise to a height of a couple of hundred feet or so and were most impressive. [I remember seeing something similar on a televised display by Lancaster in the UK].
There were some nice “shell of shells” type of shells – containing up to around 20 smaller shells which all exploded simultaneously after having being widely dispersed in the air by the breaking of the carrier shell.
There were also some nice colour-changing “go-getter” type of self propelled stars.
The use of brilliant yellow and orange ball stars really stuck in my memory as being of a particularly good quality. Also good was the use of crossette type stars – stars which break into several smaller stars at the end of their burn.
The finale was enjoyable with plenty of large titanium salutes, though not as many or as much noise as the US show! Overall, it was a very enjoyable display.