Fireballs to Order

Anthony Lealand , New Zealand

We were delighted when after three months work we created fireballs as neat pyrotechnic packages, ready to be sent out with for easy operation in the field. This is now a safe easily operated and approved product for transport and operation by pyrotechnicians. We have great feedback from pyrotechnicians who are well aware of the time issues and dangers with conventional fireballs.

We no longer had to grit our teeth and face making one off fireballs. You want a big one, just take six modules and fire together!

The photo of these was taken opening the Genesis e3P energy Project. Fired by New Zealand's Prime Minister, it was designed to create a great media moment.

I spent 12 years working at the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Canterbury developing lecture demonstrations. I worked with everything in physics from simple mechanics, to optics, vacuum electronics, solid-state electronics, x-rays and radioactivity.

The department has extensive workshops and built a 1 m diameter McClellan Telescope, so we were not lacking in the best equipment to create lecture demonstrations.

In my personal life I was very interested in sailing and with my partner Annette Wilde we built a 10 m yacht and sailed in the Subantarctic Islands and Tropical Islands of the South Pacific.

Innovation as the mainstay of our business, as in New Zealand we have a very limited market, with only 4 million people. As a result replacing expensive imported products with local equivalents has become an important part of our business model and pushed our expertise forward.

Fireballs have always been the mainstay of special effects and film spectaculars. But they are messy to make, and are created as one off individual items.

Mostly these use liquid fuels, or sometimes flammable powders. But there are always problems with having liquid fuels and explosives in the same area, legally not permissible, and always requiring fiddling about to set it exactly right.

Every part of the construction from the container they are fired from, the type of propellant powder, the wadding, the initiation, the fuel and the cover are all crucial to the correct operation. There are also other effects such as wind which can pull them to pieces, and static electricity which can make them very dangerous.

We created a consistent product with a known operating envelope.

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