The property’s guest cabins sit close enough to the display field that mortar placement had to work backward from NFPA 1123’s minimum distance table rather than from where the client originally wanted the firing line. The compromise moved the mortars 210 feet further from the lake than initially planned, comfortably clearing distance for the 5-inch shells used in the display while keeping sightlines open from the main house.
The cue sheet is built to a hard countdown: a single test shell at 11:58 to confirm the crowd’s attention, silence from 11:59:30, and the first shell of the main sequence firing at the stroke of midnight, synced to a countdown track piped through the property’s outdoor speakers.
