Sparkly plume & a big roar
Thank you everyone for visiting, commenting and fav'ing - very much appreciated! Press "L" for better view and "F" if you like it!
This was the highlight of today's rocket launch event at Snow Ranch: A big rocket with L-motor took off with a big roar and sparkly black fumes, then went out of sight very quickly. This was its maiden flight - the launch and flight was perfect, but the parachute did not deploy on decent. The rocket came down ballistic and was completely destroyed! Launching big rockets is an expensive hobby, the propellant alone for this rocket is around $400, the rocket with electronics is north of $1000.
Launching big rockets requires a certification. There are three levels. I have level 1 certification, the first category. The person who launched this rocket has level 2 certification - the L-motor is the biggest engine you can launch with this certification. An L-motor burns in about 2 seconds and produces an average thrust of about 2000 Newtons (equiv 200 kg, 440 lbs).
I took many consecutive shots of this launch in sports mode. Unfortunately I left the camera in automatic mode - the aperture was too high, and with that the exposure to slow for this handheld 200mm (350mm equiv for full frame) tele shot. Lesson learned for next time: Use manual mode. This is the first shot, the only usable one. Well it is not totally sharp though, but I like the overall feel. Usually I use RAW, but this time I took the JPG version (the NEX-6 has good in-camera noise reduction), and processed it into a soft HDR photo.
HDR, 1 exposure, NEX-6, _DSC5806_hdr1sof3c
Sparkly plume & a big roar
Thank you everyone for visiting, commenting and fav'ing - very much appreciated! Press "L" for better view and "F" if you like it!
This was the highlight of today's rocket launch event at Snow Ranch: A big rocket with L-motor took off with a big roar and sparkly black fumes, then went out of sight very quickly. This was its maiden flight - the launch and flight was perfect, but the parachute did not deploy on decent. The rocket came down ballistic and was completely destroyed! Launching big rockets is an expensive hobby, the propellant alone for this rocket is around $400, the rocket with electronics is north of $1000.
Launching big rockets requires a certification. There are three levels. I have level 1 certification, the first category. The person who launched this rocket has level 2 certification - the L-motor is the biggest engine you can launch with this certification. An L-motor burns in about 2 seconds and produces an average thrust of about 2000 Newtons (equiv 200 kg, 440 lbs).
I took many consecutive shots of this launch in sports mode. Unfortunately I left the camera in automatic mode - the aperture was too high, and with that the exposure to slow for this handheld 200mm (350mm equiv for full frame) tele shot. Lesson learned for next time: Use manual mode. This is the first shot, the only usable one. Well it is not totally sharp though, but I like the overall feel. Usually I use RAW, but this time I took the JPG version (the NEX-6 has good in-camera noise reduction), and processed it into a soft HDR photo.
HDR, 1 exposure, NEX-6, _DSC5806_hdr1sof3c