My stepson is at that stage in his lfe where he has to choose his profession - well his first anyway as he's 16 and about to look into starting college courses.

He has expressed interests in electrician/electronics but the other day he sw a programme on TV about specia effects and in particular the pyro technics side of it, i.e. the explosions and so on.


I was just wondering if anyone on here could help out in the way of what qualifications he would need to get and what sort of courses he should look at doing

Looking through all the college prospectuses it seems there are coruses for just about everything.

I was quite taken with the college near by that does just courses for Motorsport and in particular, Rallying


Anyway, any help, advice, feedback would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks


Mark

 

Found This for you

UK Pyrotechnics Society Forums > Training & Getting Jobs

I hope he fulfills his ambition.

regards

Ant

 

My middle name is Guy, my birthday is November 5 and I love fireworks - the bigger the better! So I hope your son succeeds in blowing everything up . . . except himself!

Please remind him - you can NEVER EVER make a mistake in this line of business so he must be prepared to check, CHECK and CHECK again and NEVER EVER take anybody's word for something - you check their work too just as they should check yours.

I have seen quite a few firework injuries, the most notable was a headmaster at the school fireworks party who looked into a mortar tube wondering why the firework he had just lit had not gone off. Belatedly it did - straight through his face and out of the back of his skull whilst spraying his 14 year old daughter who was near him with his brains.

Gory, yes, but I tell the story to anyone who wants to let fireworks off as it gets the point across - safety first, safety second and safety third.

Good luck to him!

 

Got to agree with this guy, I used to play in a semi-professional band, when we did larger venues we had a pyrotechnics engineer that worked with us to make the stage display a bit more spectacular.

We would normally start setting up in a venue at 11:00 for a gig that would get underway around 8PM. The pyro guy would weigh in around lunchtime and was working solid right through until about 6PM just to have a couple of flash pots, a contraption that shot flames into the air and a thing that rained down bits of molten metal like a big sparkler.

Like the above post says, evrything was checked, rechecked and then checked again. There was no margin for error. Lots of mesauring and lots of testing the guy hated distractions.

I dont know what his qualifications were but he was a spark by trade, he did need some kind of license, and we needed a lot of insurance cover, but some of the indoor effects could be just as spectacular as the outdoor stuff.

 

You will need an explosives licence, not the easiest thing in the world to get as your handling pyrotechnics on a daily basis.
If you have any kind of criminal record, wave goodbye to that or if your a "high risk" group, also the same.
But good luck with going for it as stated above, its all about safety, same with any weapon (as thats basically it is), its always live and should be handled as such.

Tony